The Gryffindors learn about Harry Potter
by Lisa Boon
Summary: I do not own the Harry Potter books at all and I am NOT doing this for money in any way. I am just doing this for fun. Harry Potter ranting about how the world does not believe that Tom Riddle is back when seven books fall on to a table. Books about his life. Read along with the rest of the Gryffindors as they get to know the boy behind the famous scar. Takes place in 5th year
1. AN

AN:Hi. It is Lisa Boon and I am going to be doing a Harry Potter reading the books thing. If it gets taken down so be it, I'll fight the people who take it down. This takes place during Harry's 5th year of school and only the Gryffindors are reading it.  
I would like to thank eskimoRock for beating this story for me.  
Also I'm doing an disclamer right hear so I do not have to put it on every chapter  
I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER OR ANY OF THE PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS, SPELLS, CREATURES, OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT IS ASSOCIATED WITH THE HARRY POTTER WORLD.  
Lisa Boon.


	2. prologue

Harry Potter was mad. Not just a 'I'm not going to talk to you' mad he was a shaking, fist clenched eyes a dark emerald green mad.

"I can't believe it. I just can't believe it!" he yelled pacing back and forth across the gryffindor common room he turned on his heel and went the other way, his two best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger where looking at him. He stopped and looked out the window. "Well yes I can actually it IS Umbridge we are talking about" he rubbed the back of his hand where the words "I must not tell lies' where etched into his hand.

"Harry calm down" Hermione said looking at him with worry as the rest of the common room looked on with interest.

"I just wish...I Just wish there was a way to make people see that he was back, that I'm not lying...why would they think I'm lying about something like this?" he whispered as he sat down in front of the fire looking helplessly into it.

Just then there was a flash of blue light and seven books fell onto one of the coffee tables.

"What in the..." Said Fred who had fallen out of a chair when the books landed.

Harry crawled over to them and looked at the cover. There was no dust cover just the hard cover of the book. He quirked an eyebrow and opened it up groaned and began banging his head on the table. Ron and Hermione came over startled by his behaviour and looked at the title there in bold was

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

By J.K. Rowling.

"Well," Hermione said "look on the bright side, now people will know the truth."

"Yea, about You-Know-Who" Ron said smiling

"Oh yes, they will know the truth about Voldemort but also fluffy, the Stone, Norbert, and Quirrell" Harry said.

"Yea, did not think of that" Ron said paling slightly

"Well I say we read them" Hermione said Ron snorted and she shot him a glare

"What? It is no surprises that you would say that" Ron said

"Who sent them?" Katie Bell asked Harry looked all around the floor and on the table but there was no note or anything.

"Well come on lets read it already" a murmur went up at that and Fred and George started up a chant of 'Read it read it read it" Sighing Harry took the book settled down in a chair and opened it.

"Chapter 1. The boy who lived"


	3. The boy who lived

**Do not own Harry Potter. JK Rowling dose. Big Thanks to Azaelia Silmarwen for looking over this chapter. **

"**Chapter One: The Boy Who Lived**," he began.

"Who is that?" Fred asked with feigning innocence.

"No clue. If you shut up we might find out," George said, mock glaring at him.

**Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense. Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours.**

"What a lovely way to find out about people. I suppose going around for tea is out of fashion?" Lavender said to the room at large.

"Aunt Petunia always was a little hypocritical," Harry informed her. "She could spy on the neighbours all she wanted, but when they tried it on her she threatened to call the cops... Muggle Aurors," he explained to the confused looks that he got.

**The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.**

Fred and George snorted.

"Oh sure, there is no finer boy," Ginny said, rolling her eyes.

**The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it.**

"Oh what, what, what?!" Dean said, bouncing on the chair in his excitement. Alicia looked at him.

"Maybe if you're quiet, we will find out," she said.

**They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters.**

"Really?" Dean said, sounding disappointed. "That's the secret?"

"That is a lame secret," Seamus commented. "A good secret is what Ron, Harry and Hermione do at the end of the school year every year."

"It won't be secret any more. We will be able to find out with these readings!" Parvati informed him happily. The Golden Trio looked at each other.

**Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as Un-Dursleyish as it was possible to be.**

"Yeah, well, you and Uncle Vernon are as Un-Potterish as you can possibly be," Harry commented before continuing with the reading.

**The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn't want Dudley mixing with a child like that.**

"You mean a kind person, who would do anything for anyone. You don't want your brat of a kid mixing with him because it might do him some good?" Hermione remarked. Nods from all the other girls followed her statement.

**When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair.**

"What a brat," said Ginny.

"Maybe he was tired?" Colin suggested. "Don't most babies yell and complain when they are tired?"

**None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. **

**"Little tyke,"**

"Little? Him?" Fred and George both cracked up laughing.

**chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four's drive.**

**It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar**

"Feathers falling from the sky?" asked Lee.

"Why would there be feathers falling from the sky?" asked Romilda.

"Owls were flying around, weren't they? - and I'm sure that they lose some while flying," Lee explained.

"Ah."

**- a cat reading a map.**

"Or that," Lee said looking a little shocked. He wasn't expecting anything like that.

**For a second, Mr Dursley didn't realize what he had seen - then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn't a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light.**

"Of course it was! I'm positive that is what it was," Harry said, interrupting himself again. He was glad that he was only related to Uncle Vernon by marriage.

**Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive - no, looking at the sign; cats couldn't read maps or signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind.**

**As he drove toward town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn't help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn't bear people who dressed in funny clothes**

"Then maybe you should dress differently?" Fred suggested. "I mean there is only so much boring a person can take."

**- the getups you saw on young people!**

"How old is he? Seventy?" someone shouted.

"No, I think he is about thirty-one... thirty-two," Harry answered.

**He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren't young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt - these people were obviously collecting for something... yes, that would be it.**

"But if they were collecting wouldn't they have tins or signs or something?" Hermione questioned logically.

**The traffic moved on and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings parking lot, his mind back on drills.**

"One track mind, he has!" said George.

**Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn't, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn't see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open- mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime.**

"How could of they not?" asked Neville.

"Muggles use a post man to deliver mail, not owls," Harry explained, before Hermione could answer.

**Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more.**

"Yes, sounds like an absolutely wonderful morning," Natalie said, rolling her eyes.

**He was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he'd stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.**

"Wow, he walked somewhere," Harry said in shock.

**He'd forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker's. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn't know why, but they made him uneasy. This bunch were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn't see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were saying.**

**"The Potters, that's right, that's what I heard yes, their son, Harry"**

**Mr Dursley stopped dead.**

"Really?" Ron said happily.

"No, it is just an expression,' Patricia Stimpson explained, looking over at Ron.

"I know that, but I can hope though, right?"

**Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but thought better of it.**

"Good idea," Harry said with a slight edge. "The only things coming out of your mouth would be an oink or some rude remark about abnormalities."

**He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone, and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking... no, he was being stupid.**

"Well you already were stupid, so no change there," said Harry.

**Potter wasn't such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry.**

"Nope, not in the Wizarding World you are the only Potter left," Neville informed Harry.

"Oh joy, just what I wanted to hear," Harry grumbled sarcastically.

**Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure his nephew was called Harry. He'd never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold.**

"I don't think those have a nice ring to them," Ginny said thoughtfully, mentally trying them out in her head.

"That's because you are used to using Harry," Harry explained. "If Mum and Dad had named me Harvey or, gods forbid, Harold, then you would be used to that and would think that Harry doesn't have a nice ring."

**There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley; she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn't blame her - if he'd had a sister like that... but all the same, those people in cloaks...**

"Are amazing," said George.

**He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon and when he left the building at five o'clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door.**

**"Sorry," he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. **

**It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realized that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn't seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. **

**On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare, "Don't be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy day!"**

"Oh. This is the day after Mum and Dad died" Harry whispered, before clearing his throat to continue.

**And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and walked off.**

**Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled.**

"I think I would be a little rattled as well, to tell truth," Andrew Kirke admitted.

**He hurried to his car and set off for home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn't approve of imagination.**

"What kind of man does not approve of imagination?" Alicia asked in horror.

"A very boring one!" replied Angelina.

"So, that's where Dudley gets it," Harry commented mildly.

"Gets what?" asked Ron.

"His imagination."

**As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw - and it didn't improve his mood - was the tabby cat he'd spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes.**

"That is because it is the same one," Jimmy Peakes explained slowly.

**"Shoo!" said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn't move. It just gave him a stern look.**

"I have seen a cat give that look before," said Euan Abercrombie

"We see it every day," the twins informed him in a bored voice. All they ended up doing was confusing the first year even more.

**Was this normal cat behaviour? Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife.**

**Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door's problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learned a new word ("Won't!").**

"Mine was flower," said Hermione.

"Mine was food," said Ron.

"Jam," said Harry. "Padfoot said I was trying to say James."

**Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living room in time to catch the last report on the evening news:**

**"And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation's owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern." The newscaster allowed himself a grin. "Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of owls tonight, Jim?"**

**"Well, Ted,"**

"Think that is Tonks' dad?" Ron whispered to Hermione,

"I don't think so," she replied.

**said the weatherman, "I don't know about that, but it's not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they've had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early - it's not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight."**

**Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters...**

"Kids are always whispering about Harry," Angelina said.

**Mrs Dursley came into the living room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He'd have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. **

**"Err - Petunia, dear - you haven't heard from your sister lately, have you?" **

**As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn't have a sister.**

"Isn't she a lovely sister?" Ginny questioned mockingly.

**"No," she said sharply. "Why?"**

**"Funny stuff on the news," Mr Dursley mumbled. "Owls... shooting stars... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in town today..."**

**"So?" snapped Mrs Dursley.**

**"Well, I just thought... maybe... it was something to do with... you know... her crowd."**

"Her crowd?" Veronica questioned.

**Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he'd heard the name "Potter." He decided he didn't dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, "Their son - he'd be about Dudley's age now, wouldn't he?"**

**"I suppose so," said Mrs Dursley stiffly.**

**"What's his name again? Howard, isn't it?"**

**"Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me."**

"Nasty, no. Common, yes," Ginny commented.

**"Oh, yes," said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. "Yes, I quite agree."**

"It's much better than Dudley," Seamus said in a loud whisper to Dean.

**He didn't say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it were waiting for something.**

**Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did... if it got out that they were related to a pair of - well, he didn't think he could bear it.**

"A pair of what?" Angelina demanded, narrowing her eyes.

"A pair of freaks," said Harry. Everyone looked at him.

"What? It is what they call Witches and Wizards."

**The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind... He couldn't see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on - he yawned and turned over - it couldn't affect them...**

**How very wrong he was.**

"Wish he was right for once, though," Harry sighed.

**Mr Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn't so much as quiver when a car door slammed on the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all.**

"You could learn a thing or two from the cat, Harry," said Ginny. "Patience was never your strong point was it?"

"No, not really," Harry admitted.

**A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you'd have thought he'd just popped out of the ground. The cat's tail twitched and its eyes narrowed.**

**Nothing like this man had ever been seen on Privet Drive. He was tall, thin, and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak that swept the ground, and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright, and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man's name was Albus Dumbledore.**

"Woohoo!" most of the room whooped.

**Albus Dumbledore didn't seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realize he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, "I should have known."**

**He found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air, and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again - the next lamp flickered into darkness**.

"That would be fascinating to study," said Hermione.

"Good joke product put it down on a list," George whispered to Fred.

Fred grabbed a piece of parchment from a table and put up top, 'List of Prank Ideas'.

**Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left on the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn't be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street toward number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn't look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it.**

**"Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall."**

**He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one.**

"Why? That is a Slytherin colour!" a small first year whined.

"So?" Harry looked at him.

"Well, er, she is supporting Slytherin!"

"No, she is not. She just likes the colour green. My eyes are green, so are you saying that I support Slytherin? Angelina wears emerald earrings every once in a while, does she support Slytherin? No, she wears them because she likes them and I can't change my eye colour. Besides even if I could I wouldn't. Just because she has a green cloak it does not mean she supports Slytherin!" Harry finished this rant and leaned back against the chair sighing.

After a few minute he picked up the book and continued reading, but realised that everyone was looking at him.

'What?'

'Nothing, it's just that you made a very good point there, Harry,' replied Hermione.

**Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled.**

"She has black hair? I thought it was brown," said Lavender.

**"How did you know it was me?" she asked.**

**"My dear Professor, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly."**

**"You'd be stiff if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day," said Professor McGonagall.**

**"All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here."**

"What is it with the number twelve?" Parvati wondered aloud.

**Professor McGonagall sniffed angrily.**

"The angry sniff, not that, anything but that!" Ron yelled, shocking Harry. Next thing he knew he was on the ground, rubbing his head. "Ow, Harry, what was that for?"

"Yelling in my ear," Harry answered with a hard edge in his tone.

**"Oh yes, everyone's celebrating, all right," she said impatiently. "You'd think they'd be a bit more careful,**

"Yes, they really should have been. I'm surprised that we were not found out," Fred commented, shaking his head.

**but no - even the Muggles have noticed something's going on. It was on their news." She jerked her head back at the Dursleys' dark living-room window. "I heard it. Flocks of owls... shooting stars... Well, they're not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent - I'll bet that was Daedalus Diggle. He never had much sense."**

**"You can't blame them," said Dumbledore gently. "We've had precious little to celebrate for eleven years."**

**"I know that," said Professor McGonagall irritably. "But that's no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping rumours."**

**She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn't, so she went on. "A fine thing it would be if, on the very day You-Know-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?"**

**"It certainly seems so," said Dumbledore. "We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a lemon drop?"**

**"A what?"**

**"A lemon drop. They're a kind of Muggle sweet I'm rather fond of"**

"And laced with a calming draft... at least the ones in your office are," Harry said to himself.

**"No, thank you," said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn't think this was the moment for lemon drops. "As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone -"**

"You said You-Know-Who!" Ron said happily.

"It is in the book, Ron, of course I said it," Harry sighed.

**"My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this 'You- Know-Who' nonsense - for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort." Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two lemon drops, seemed not to notice. "It all gets so confusing if we keep saying 'You-Know-Who.' I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort's name."**

**"I know you haven't," said Professor McGonagall, sounding half exasperated, half admiring. "But you're different. Everyone knows you're the only one You-Know- oh, all right, Voldemort, was frightened of."**

**"You flatter me," said Dumbledore calmly. "Voldemort had powers I will never have."**

**"Only because you're too - well - noble to use them."**

**"It's lucky it's dark. I haven't blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs."**

"That was nice of her," Lavender said as she shot the boys a look, for they were gagging and mimicking throwing up. "What is so gross about that?"

"Nothing, Lav," said Dean. "But what kind of man wears earmuffs?"

"Um, we all did in our second year, remember? And don't call me Lav!"

**Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, "The owls are nothing next to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone's saying? About why he's disappeared? About what finally stopped him?"**

**It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold, hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever "everyone" was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another lemon drop and did not answer.**

**"What they're saying," she pressed on, "is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric's Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are - are - that they're - dead."**

**Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped.**

**"Lily and James... I can't believe it... I didn't want to believe it... Oh, Albus..."**

**Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. **

**"I know... I know..." he said heavily.**

**Professor McGonagall's voice trembled as she went on. **

**"That's not all. They're saying he tried to kill the Potter's son, Harry. But - he couldn't. He couldn't kill that little boy. No one knows why, or how, but they're saying that when he couldn't kill Harry Potter, Voldemort's power somehow broke - and that's why he's gone."**

"No, he was defeated because of Mum," Harry said softly. Hermione gave him a quick hug.

**Dumbledore nodded glumly.**

**"It's - it's true?" faltered Professor McGonagall. "After all he's done... all the people he's killed... he couldn't kill a little boy? It's just astounding... of all the things to stop him... but how in the name of heaven did Harry survive?"**

**"We can only guess," said Dumbledore. "We may never know."**

"I think he knows, he is just not telling anyone," Harry grumbled.

**Professor McGonagall pulled out a lace handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes beneath her spectacles.**

"Lace... I can't see her using lace," Dennis admitted.

**Dumbledore gave a great sniff as he took a golden watch from his pocket and examined it. It was a very odd watch. It had twelve hands**

"Again with the number twelve," Parvati said, throwing her hands up in the air.

**but no numbers; instead, little planets were moving around the edge. It must have made sense to Dumbledore, though, because he put it back in his pocket and said, "Hagrid's late. I suppose it was he who told you I'd be here, by the way?"**

**"Yes," said Professor McGonagall. "And I don't suppose you're going to tell me why you're here, of all places?"**

**"I've come to bring Harry to his aunt and uncle. They're the only family he has left now."**

**"You don't mean - you can't mean the people who live here?"**

"Yes, he does unfortunately," Harry sighed.

**cried Professor McGonagall, jumping to her feet and pointing at number four. "Dumbledore - you can't. I've been watching them all day. You couldn't find two people who are less like us. And they've got this son - I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets. Harry Potter come and live here!"**

**"It's the best place for him," said Dumbledore firmly. "His aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to him when he's older. I've written them a letter."**

"A letter! It's the first of November and it's cold!" Hermione yelled disapprovingly.

**"A letter?" repeated Professor McGonagall faintly, sitting back down on the wall. "Really, Dumbledore, you think you can explain all this in a letter? These people will never understand him! He'll be famous - a legend - I wouldn't be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter day in the future - there will be books written about Harry - every child in our world will know his name!"**

"Oh joy," Harry said sarcastically, crossing his arms with a pout.

**"Exactly," said Dumbledore, looking very seriously over the top of his half-moon glasses. "It would be enough to turn any boy's head. Famous before he can walk and talk! Famous for something he won't even remember! Can't you see how much better off he'll be, growing up away from all that until he's ready to take it?"**

"That is true, I guess.' Harry uncrossed his arms with a sigh.

**Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, changed her mind, swallowed, and then said, "Yes - yes, you're right, of course. But how is the boy getting here, Dumbledore?" She eyed his cloak suddenly as though she thought he might be hiding Harry underneath it.**

**"Hagrid's bringing him."**

**"You think it - wise - to trust Hagrid with something as important as this?"**

**I would trust Hagrid with my life," said Dumbledore.**

**"I'm not saying his heart isn't in the right place," said Professor McGonagall grudgingly, "but you can't pretend he's not careless. He does tend to - what was that?"**

"The moon," Lavender suggested.

**A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around them. It grew steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight; it swelled to a roar as they both looked up at the sky - and a huge motorcycle fell out of the air and landed on the road in front of them.**

"Cool! A flying motorcycle, I want one!" Dean exclaimed.

**If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild - long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets.**

**"Hagrid," said Dumbledore, sounding relieved. "At last. And where did you get that motorcycle?"**

**"Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sit," said the giant, climbing carefully off the motorcycle as he spoke. "Young Sirius Black lent it to me. I've got him, sir."**

**"No problems, were there?"**

**"No, sir - house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin' around. He fell asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol."**

**Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep. Under a tuft of jet-black hair over his forehead they could see a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightning.**

**"Is that where -?" whispered Professor McGonagall.**

**"Yes," said Dumbledore. "He'll have that scar forever."**

**"Couldn't you do something about it, Dumbledore?"**

"Please, couldn't you?" Harry said as his scar gave a prickle.

**"Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy.**

"How is my scar handy?" Harry demanded.

**"I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. Well - give him here, Hagrid - we'd better get this over with."**

**Dumbledore took Harry in his arms and turned toward the Dursleys' house.**

**"Could I - could I say good-bye to him, sir?" asked Hagrid. He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss. Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a wounded dog.**

"Awwww!" many of the girls cooed, looking at Harry who had gone red.

**"Shhh!" hissed Professor McGonagall, "you'll wake the Muggles!"**

**"S-s-sorry," sobbed Hagrid, taking out a large, spotted handkerchief and burying his face in it. "But I c-c-can't stand it - Lily an' James dead - an' poor little Harry off ter live with Muggles –"**

**"Yes, yes, it's all very sad, but get a grip on yourself, Hagrid, or we'll be found," Professor McGonagall whispered, patting Hagrid gingerly on the arm as Dumbledore stepped over the low garden wall and walked to the front door. **

**He laid Harry gently on the doorstep, took a letter out of his cloak, tucked it inside Harry's blankets, and then came back to the other two. For a full minute the three of them stood and looked at the little bundle; Hagrid's shoulders shook, Professor McGonagall blinked furiously, and the twinkling light that usually shone from Dumbledore's eyes seemed to have gone out.**

"If he was unhappy about leaving you there, why did he leave you there?" asked Lauren.

**"Well," said Dumbledore finally, "that's that. We've no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations."**

**"Yeah," said Hagrid in a very muffled voice, "I'll be takin' Sirius his bike back. G'night, Professor McGonagall - Professor Dumbledore, sir."**

**Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night.**

**"I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall," said Dumbledore, nodding to her. Professor McGonagall blew her nose in reply.**

**Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. On the corner he stopped and took out the silver Put-Outer. He clicked it once and twelve balls of light sped back to their street lamps so that Privet Drive glowed suddenly orange and he could make out a tabby cat slinking around the corner at the other end of the street. He could just see the bundle of blankets on the step of number four.**

**"Good luck, Harry," he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone.**

"I'll need more than luck," Harry muttered.

**A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter**

"I wonder what it said," Hermione pondered aloud.

**beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs Dursley's scream**

"Try a few years' time. He'll_ still _be woken up to her screaming," Harry exclaimed.

**as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!"**

"Done. Who's next?" asked Harry.

"I'll read," replied Dean.


	4. The vanishing glass

**(A/N: Still do not own Harry Potter. Big thanks to Azaelia for looking over this chapter for me also a big thank you to Gamecocker for telling me that I skipped this chapter.) **

"**The Vanishing Glass," **Dean read out, making Harry groan.** "Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all.**

"It still has not changed at all... just the photographs,' Harry commented.

**The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed.**

"Physic much, Harry?" Neville asked.

Harry shrugged.

**Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-coloured bonnets - but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby,**

"Could have fooled me," Harry said bitterly. "He still throws hissy fits if he doesn't get his way.'

**and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too.**

"Did you get taken away?" asked Katie Bell

"Not exactly..." Harry said, looking at Ron and Hermione wondering how they would take it about him sleeping in the cupboard.

**Yet Harry Potter was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. His Aunt Petunia was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.**

**"Up! Get up! Now!"**

**Harry woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again.**

**"Up!" she screeched.**

"Tired of over sleeping? Need to get to work or class on time? Just get this bran new alarm clock, it screeches at you until you get up. Available in a store near you," said Lee.

**Harry heard her walking toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had a funny feeling he'd had the same dream before.**

"That's 'cause you did." George rolled his eyes. "Only problem was it wasn't a dream."

**His aunt was back outside the door.**

**"Are you up yet?" she demanded.**

"Good god woman, give him a minute to wake up," Vicky huffed.

**"Nearly," said Harry.**

**"Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don't you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday."**

**Harry groaned.**

**"What did you say?" his aunt snapped through the door.**

**"Nothing, nothing..."**

**Dudley birthday - how could he have forgotten? Harry got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks.**

Harry closed his eyes and began banging his head against the table again.

**He found a pair under his bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.**

"You slept where?" Katie Bell said as Hermione pulled Harry away from the table.

"Under the stairs," said Harry.

"Why?"

"Because they did not want me taking up space," Harry said in a tone that clearly said he did not want to talk about it.

"This is not over, Harry... Ron, you and I will be talking about this and we will be telling Sirius and Lupin," Hermione whispered to him so no one else could hear.

Harry sighed and nodded knowing he would not get out of it.

**When he was dressed he went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all Dudley's birthday presents. It looked as though Dudley had gotten the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike.**

"Why does he want a second telly? One is enough, isn't it?" asked Hermione.

"Not for him. Last summer he got one as a welcome home gift from them because he was complaining about the walk from the living room to the kitchen," Harry answered.

"Wow, was a spoiled teen," said Dennis.

"What's a computer?" Ron asked bewildered.

"It is like a box type thing that you can play games on and write on if you have the right program," Hermione explained.

"What's a program?" Ron questioned yet again.

"Write down the Muggle things that you are interested in and then I'll try to explain them,' Hermione practically ordered. 'If I cannot explain them properly, then go to the Muggle studies teacher."

**Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Harry, as Dudley was very fat and hated exercise - unless of course it involved punching somebody. Dudley's favourite punching bag was Harry, but he couldn't often catch him. Harry didn't look it, but he was very fast.**

"You can say that again," Ron said. "'Mione and I have trouble keeping up with him most of the time, and that is him jogging!"

**Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley's, and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was.**

"Oh! We can take you clothing shopping, Harry!" Parvati squealed.

"Yeah, he will be just like a doll!" Lavender said.

Harry's eyes grew wide.

'Help me,' he mouthed to Ron, Seamus, Neville and Dean, who were laughing.

Dean laughed so hard he dropped the book. Finally getting under control Dean started reading again.

**Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair, and bright green eyes.**

"I love your eyes," Ginny said.

"Yeah, we know 'His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad'. Ring any bells?" Fred quoted, holding in laughter.

Ginny aimed a kick at Fred's shins. A yelp in pain told her that she had hit her target.

**He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose.**

"Can we go and prank your cousin, Harry?" Fred asked.

"Be my guest."

"Wicked!"

**The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning.**

"You liked that?" Alicia asked sceptically.

"Well yeah, I thought it was cool. I mean how many kids have a lightning bolt on their forehead?"

"Good point, but still… you liked it?"

**He had had it as long as he could remember, and the first question he could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had gotten it.**

**"In the car crash when your parents died," she had said. "And don't ask questions."**

"Is that why you go to me with questions about homework when you could go to a professor?" Hermione asked.

"No, not really… I just think that if the teacher already explained it, then why have them explain it again and still not get it?' replied Harry. 'However, if I ask someone my own age, I may understand it better."

**Don't ask questions - that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.**

"Ask questions that is the rule if you want to know about life... and it is a natural thing for a child!" Hermione snapped.

**Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Harry was turning over the bacon.**

**"Comb your hair!" he barked, by way of a morning greeting.**

"Hey, do you remember that one time in forth year when Harry decided that he was going to comb his hair and the comb got stuck in it?" Seamus asked.

Ron and Dean laughed as did Hermione and the rest of the fourth year girls.

"Oh god, not that story again," Harry groaned.

"What happened?" Angelina asked eagerly.

"Well, Harry here decided that he was going to comb his hair, so he took my comb," Dean began, "and started combing it, but half way through it got stuck."

"So," Ron said, picking up the story "he tried pulling it out, which is the only logical thing to do when something is stuck, but instead it just got more tangled."

"Then," Seamus continued "he started tugging on it, but still could not get it out. Now we must remind you that this day was a Wednesday, therefore a class day and we had fifteen minutes to get to class."

"So what does he do? He grabs his books and bolt to class with the comb stuck in his hair and it was there the whole day," Ron finished up.

Everyone cracked up and Harry glared at the boys.

**About once a week, Uncle Vernon looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that Harry needed a haircut. Harry must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in his class put together, but it made no difference, his hair simply grew that way - all over the place.**

**Harry was frying eggs by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Dudley looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a large pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes, and thick blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel - Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.**

"Not bad, Harry, but you need to think of something better than that if you want to join our ranks," said George.

"Who said I want to?" Harry asked.

**Harry put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, which was difficult as there wasn't much room. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell.**

**"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father. "That's two less than last year."**

**"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present, see, it's here under this big one from Mommy and Daddy."**

**"Alright, thirty-seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face. **

**Harry, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down his bacon as fast as possible in case Dudley turned the table over.**

"Chew quickly, but don't chock," said Hermione.

"'Mione you _do_ know this happened a while ago, right?"

"Yeah, but you still do it sometimes."

**Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger, too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today. How's that, popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right''**

"Oh sure, encourage it why don't you?" said Fred, suddenly angry wishing his mum and dad could by them thirty seven presents for his birthday not that he did not like the three or four that him and George got apiece, but still...

**Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work.**

**Finally he said slowly, "So I'll have thirty ... thirty..."**

"He is eleven years old and cannot count?" Jimmy said in amazement.

**"Thirty-nine, sweetums," said Aunt Petunia.**

**"Oh." Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. "Alright then."**

**Uncle Vernon chuckled. **

**"Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father. 'Atta boy, Dudley!" **

**He ruffled Dudley's hair.**

"How is acting like a spoiled bi – ow, Katie!" Fred exclaimed.

"Watch your language, Fred! There are children here!" she scolded.

Fred looked at the younger kids.

"Sorry, how would acting like a spoiled person make him get his money's worth?"

"No clue."

**At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Harry and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a video camera, a remote control airplane, sixteen new computer games, and a VCR. He was ripping the paper off a gold wristwatch when Aunt Petunia came back from the telephone looking both angry and worried.**

**"Bad news, Vernon," she said. "Mrs Figg's broken her leg. She can't take him." **

**She jerked her head in Harry's direction.**

"Yeah, he knows I was right there," said Harry.

"Did they always do that?" asked Ginny.

"What; act like I was not there? Yeah, most of the time."

**Dudley's mouth fell open in horror, but Harry's heart gave a leap. Every year on Dudley's birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Every year, Harry was left behind with Mrs Figg, a mad old lady who lived two streets away. Harry hated it there. The whole house smelled of cabbage and Mrs Figg made him look at photographs of all the cats she'd ever owned.**

**"Now what?" said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Harry as though he'd planned this.**

"Awww, dang, they found out my evil master plan. Phooey, now I need to come up with a different one," Harry mocked bitterly.

**Harry knew he ought to feel sorry that Mrs Figg had broken her leg, but it wasn't easy when he reminded himself it would be a whole year before he had to look at Tibbles, Snowy, Mr Paws, and Tufty again.**

"Who would name a cat Mr Paws, let alone any name starting with Mr?" Euan wondered.

"She once had a big yellow tabby cat maned Mr Hansomepants," Harry said. "No lie"

"That poor cat."

**"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.**

**"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy."**

"Feelings mutual," Harry said darkly, not forgetting what 'Aunt Marge' had said about his mum and dad.

**The Dursleys often spoke about Harry like this, as though he wasn't there - or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug.**

Fred walked up to Harry and looked at him.

"Hello? Can you understand me? Do you speak English?"

"Yes, I can understand you, and yes, I speak English. I can also speak some Gaelic, Spanish and French," Harry replied. Everyone looked at him.

"What?"

"You can speak Gaelic?" Seamus asked interestedly.

"Mm-hmm, I had to take it in primary school, same with the other two languages."

"Say something then."

"Okay... ummmm, Dia duit Conas atá tú? Tá mé breá. Is é mo ainm Harry Potter. Cad é mise?"

"What does that mean?" Dean enquired.

"Hello, how are you? I am fine. My name is Harry Potter. What is yours?"

"Cool," Seamus said in amazement. He didn't know anyone, besides his family and people in his village, who couls speak Gaelic.

"Well, I guess you can understand them so you are not a slug," said Fred.

**"What about what's-her-name, your friend - Yvonne?"**

"Oh jeez not her. She used to make me listen to the wireless and there was this guy named Daniel O'Donnell. She would sing along with him and it was like a banshee," Harry informed his House, flinching at the memory.

**"On vacation in Majorca," snapped Aunt Petunia.**

**"You could just leave me here," Harry put in hopefully (he'd be able to watch what he wanted on television for a change and maybe even have a go on Dudley's computer).**

**Aunt Petunia looked as though she'd just swallowed a lemon.**

"Her usual look when things are not going right," Harry commented mildly.

**"And come back and find the house in ruins?" she snarled.**

**"I won't blow up the house," said Harry, but they weren't listening.**

"They never do," Harry sighed.

**"I suppose we could take him to the zoo," said Aunt Petunia slowly, "... and leave him in the car..."**

**"That car's new; he's not sitting in it alone..."**

"Oh yes, the car is new, but what about Harry?" Alicia screeched.

**Dudley began to cry loudly. In fact, he wasn't really crying - it had been years since he'd really cried - but he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him anything he wanted.**

**"Dinky Duddydums, don't cry, Mummy won't let him spoil your special day!" she cried, flinging her arms around him.**

**"I... don't... want... him... t-t-to come!" Dudley yelled between huge, pretend sobs. "He always sp- spoils everything!" **

"No, just You-Know-Who's plans," said Ginny

**He shot Harry a nasty grin through the gap in his mother's arms.**

**Just then, the doorbell rang - "Oh, good Lord, they're here!" said Aunt Petunia frantically - and a moment later, Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people's arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once.**

"Must not be a very good friend then," said Ron, shooting Harry a glance.

He had woken up a few times to hear Harry crying because of a nightmare. He had gone over to his bed and just patted his back until Harry had gone to sleep. At first Harry had tried to stop, but Ron had told him that he could cry and it was alright, he would not tease him or anything.

**Half an hour later, Harry, who couldn't believe his luck,**

"Which is not going to last, because it never does," Neville sighed. Harry had to have the worst luck on the planet.

**was sitting in the back of the Dursleys' car with Piers and Dudley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in his life. His aunt and uncle hadn't been able to think of anything else to do with him, but before they'd left, Uncle Vernon had taken Harry aside.**

**"I'm warning you," he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Harry's, "I'm warning you now, boy - any funny business, anything at all - and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas."**

"I'll lock you up with Umbridge from now until never if you keep your word to that!" Hermione yelled.

Everyone looked at her.

"What, I can make comments too."

**"I'm not going to do anything," said Harry, "honestly."**

**But Uncle Vernon didn't believe him. No one ever did.**

**The problem was, strange things often happened around Harry and it was just no good telling the Dursleys he didn't make them happen.**

**Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Harry coming back from the barbers looking as though he hadn't been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he was almost bald except for his bangs, which she left "to hide that horrible scar."**

George laughed.

"Oh God! I'm sorry, Harry, but just picturing you bald is just funny."

**Dudley had laughed himself silly**

George immediately stopped laughing

"Sorry, Harry."

**at Harry, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where he was already laughed at for his baggy clothes and taped glasses. Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. He had been given a week in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried to explain that he couldn't explain how it had grown back so quickly.**

**Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force him into a revolting old sweater of Dudley's (brown with orange puff balls)**

"Oh gross... that sounds disgusting!" Natalie squealed, wrinkling her nose.

"Yes, let's make a fashion statement saying that the 70's are back in style!" Dean suggested, jumping up and trying to do a disco move. Unfortunately, his foot got caught in the rug, when he went to spin, resulting in him crashing into Parvati and Lavender.

**- The harder she tried to pull it over his head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn't fit Harry. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to his great relief, Harry wasn't punished.**

**On the other hand, he'd gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. Dudley's gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to Harry's surprise, as anyone else, there he was sitting on the chimney.**

"You must have Apparated, cool!" Ron exclaimed.

**The Dursleys had received a very angry letter from Harry's headmistress telling them Harry had been climbing school buildings. But all he'd tried to do (as he shouted at Uncle Vernon through the locked door of his cupboard) was jump behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors. Harry supposed that the wind must have caught him in mid- jump.**

"You may be light, Harry, but I highly doubt you are _that _light!" Hermione laughed.

**But today, nothing was going to go wrong. It was even worth being with Dudley and Piers to be spending the day somewhere that wasn't school, his cupboard, or Mrs Figg's cabbage-smelling living room.**

**While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Harry, the council, Harry, the bank, and Harry were just a few of his favourite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.**

"I think he likes to complain about you, Harry," George joked.

"Really? I had no clue, George!" Harry snapped, harsher than he had meant to. George looked at him.

"Sorry, I just have a bad head ache," Harry mumbled.

"Okay, after this how about we all grab some supper and go to bed?" the head girl suggested. There was a small mutter of agreement to that.

**"... roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums," he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.**

**I had a dream about a motorcycle," said Harry, remembering suddenly. "It was flying."**

"HARRY!" Ron and Hermione yelled.

"Sorry, you two. Jeez, this was four years ago and it was the first time I was going to the zoo. So sorry for losing my head," Harry said bitterly.

**Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beet with a moustache: "MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY!"**

**Dudley and Piers sniggered.**

**I know they don't," said Harry. "It was only a dream."**

**But he wished he hadn't said anything. If there was one thing the Dursleys hated even more than his asking questions, it was his talking about anything acting in a way it shouldn't, no matter if it was in a dream or even a cartoon - they seemed to think he might get dangerous ideas.**

"Harry, get dangerous ideas?" Hermione said, looking at Ron "Did you ever hear of such a thing?"

"No, Hermione, I _never_ heard of him getting a dangerous idea," replied Ron.

"Oh, shut up you two!" Harry grumbled.

**It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because the smiling lady in the van had asked Harry what he wanted before they could hurry him away, they bought him a cheap lemon ice pop. It wasn't bad, either, Harry thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching its head who looked remarkably like Dudley, except that it wasn't blond.**

"First a pig, now a gorilla; what is it with you and describing things like animals?" asked Patricia.

**Harry had the best morning he'd had in a long time. He was careful to walk a little way apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn't fall back on their favourite hobby of hitting him.**

"Let's make a hobby called 'Dudley hitting'," George suggested.

**They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his Knickerbocker glory didn't have enough ice cream on top,**

"Poor baby," Alicia said in a mock baby voice.

**Uncle Vernon bought him another one**

"Push over," Ginny muttered.

**and Harry was allowed to finish the first.**

**Harry felt, afterward, that he should have known it was all too good to last.**

**After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can - but at the moment it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.**

**Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.**

**"Make it move,"**

"You cannot force an animal to move!" Hermione snapped.

**he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge.**

**"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.**

**"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.**

**Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself - no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least he got to visit the rest of the house.**

"Um, Harry, you _do_ know you where comparing yourself to a snake, right?" asked Ron.

"Well yeah, but it is true," Harry shrugged indifferently.

**The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry's.**

**It winked.**

**Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. He looked back at the snake and winked, too.**

**The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said quite plainly:**

**"I get that all the time."**

**"I know," Harry murmured through the glass, though he wasn't sure the snake could hear him. "It must be really annoying."**

**The snake nodded vigorously.**

**"Where do you come from, anyway?" Harry asked.**

**The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Harry peered at it.**

_**Boa Constrictor, Brazil.**_

**"Was it nice there?"**

**The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and Harry read on: **_**This specimen was bred in the zoo**_**. **

**"Oh, I see - so you've never been to Brazil?"**

**As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Harry made both of them jump.**

**"DUDLEY! MR DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"**

"Thanks a lot, you big bully!" Dennis yelled.

**Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.**

**"Out of the way, you," he said, punching Harry in the ribs. **

**Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened - one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had pelt back with howls of horror.**

**Harry sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.**

**As the snake slid swiftly past him, Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amigo."**

"Oh, so this is where you found out that you were a Parselmouth," said Katie.

"Mm-Hmm," Harry said sighing.

**The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.**

"I bet!" Kenneth laughed.

**"But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?"**

"It vanished," said Harry. "So it went to where all vanishing objects go; in non-being, which is to say, everything."

"Where in the bloody hell did that come from?" asked Ron, looking at him.

"I-I don't know." Hermione looked at him suspiciously.

**The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea**

"That is how Harry likes his tea; strong and sweet," said Lauren.

"How do you know how I like my tea?' asked Harry, bewildered.

"It's common knowledge. The whole House knows!" Hermione laughed.

**while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Harry had seen, the snake hadn't done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time they were all back in Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, "Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?"**

"Shut it you!" Jack snapped.

**Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go - cupboard - stay - no meals," before he collapsed into a chair and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.**

**Harry lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had a watch.**

"Where did you get the one that you have now?" Neville enquired.

"This one I got in Diagon Ally right before third year," replied Harry.

**He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't be sure the Dursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn't risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food.**

**He'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as he could remember, ever since he'd been a baby and his parents had died in that car crash. He couldn't remember being in the car when his parents had died.**

"But your mum and dad did not die in a car crash," said Katie.

"That's the story that they had me believing for eleven years, Katie," Harry sighed.

**Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the crash, though he couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. He couldn't remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house.**

**When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were his only family. Yet sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word.**

"Think that was Kingsley?" Harry asked Ron.

"Could have been," Ron replied thoughtfully.

**The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Harry tried to get a closer look.**

**At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang.**

"Supper, homework and then another chapter or two before bed sound good to you all?" asked the head boy.

There was a general murmur of agreement from the rest of the House as various people got up to move around. After a couple hours, they sat back down to read.


	5. The letters from no one

**(Hey I'm sorry this is so late. I was gone for just about a month visting my family and I had no internet so again I'm sorry. I do not own Harry Potter JK. Rowling does and thank you to Azaelia Silmarwen for looking over the chapter.) **

After supper and with most of the third years and up having done all or most of their homework, Ginny took up the book and read out:** "The Letters from No One…**

**The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Harry his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started and Dudley had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.**

"Harry, when is Dudley's birthday?" Angelina asked.

"Um... the first week in June,' replied Harry.

"And when do the summer holidays start for Muggle kids?"

"The third week in June."

**Harry was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Dudley's gang, who visited the house every single day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader.**

"Makes perfect sense," said George.

"Yeah, if we followed that rule then Ron would be the leader!" Hermione said laughing.

"Yea-HEY! Not funny, 'Mione, not funny at all!"

Harry and Hermione laughed.

**The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Dudley's favourite sport: Harry Hunting.** **This was why Harry spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where he could see a tiny ray of hope. **

**When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn't be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thought this was very funny.**

**"They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," he told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"**

**"No, thanks," said Harry. "The poor toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it - it might be sick."**

"Ain't that the truth," said Harry.

**Then he ran, before Dudley could work out what he'd said.**

**One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Harry at Mrs Figg's. Mrs Figg wasn't as bad as usual. It turned out she'd broken her leg tripping over one of her cats, and she didn't seem quite as fond of them as before. She let Harry watch television and gave him a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she'd had it for several years.**

**That evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings' boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters.**

"Oh, good god. That is worse than the jumper!" said Patricia, making a face.

"Not all people have a fashion sense like you, Pattie,' Ginny laughed as she tried to picture Dudley in it. Once she did, she turned green.

**They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.**

"How?" asked Sam, a third year boy.

"In case you have forgotten, we carry around sticks as well!" Charlie, a sixth year student, snapped.

"But we need to use ours to harness our magic; it seems to me like they use theirs is just for hitting. That is not right," Sam explained.

**As he looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up. Harry didn't trust himself to speak. He thought two of his ribs might already have cracked from trying not to laugh.**

**There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Harry went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in grey water.**

**"What's this?" he asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question.**

**"Your new school uniform," she said.**

**Harry looked in the bowl again.**

**"Oh," he said, "I didn't realise it had to be so wet."**

"There's Harry's sarcasm that we know and love!" Hermione said, looking at Harry, who merely shook his head.

**"Don't be stupid," snapped Aunt Petunia. "I'm dying some of Dudley's old things grey for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished."**

**Harry seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue. He sat down at the table and tried not to think about how he was going to look on his first day at Stonewall High - like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin, probably.**

"Or like I have been in prison..." Harry muttered.

**Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry's new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.**

"Everywhere?" George said.

**They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.**

**"Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.**

**"Make Harry get it."**

**"Get the mail, Harry."**

**"Make Dudley get it."**

**"Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley."**

"I would not want to be poked with that thing if he carried it with him _everywhere_," said George.

**Harry dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill and - a letter for Harry.**

**Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends,**

"Now you do," said Ron

"I'll write, Harry, just send me an owl!" said Katie.

"And me," Jimmy added.

"Me too!" said Sam.

**no other relatives - he didn't belong to the library, so he'd never even got rude notes asking for books back.**

"I hate it when that happens," said Hermione.

**Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:**

_**Mr H. Potter**_

_**The Cupboard under the Stairs**_

_**4 Privet Drive**_

_**Little Whinging**_

_**Surrey**_

"Did Hogwarts not find it odd that his address said 'the cupboard under the stairs'?" Ginny questioned.

**The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.**

**Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.**

**"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke.**

"Once I find out what a letter bomb is, I'll send it to you so you can tell what is funny and what is not because that is not funny, judging by the look on Hermione's and Katie's faces," Fred said.

"Joking about bombs is not funny at all," Katie said. "It is like the blasting curse and can kill a lot of people."

**Harry went back to the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard, sat down, and slowly began to open the yellow envelope.**

**Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard.**

**"Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk. -."**

"Pity she didn't die," Harry murmured.

**"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, Harry's got something!"**

"Oh, shut your pie hole!" Dean snapped.

**Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon.**

**"That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back.**

"T-minus five and counting!" Ron said.

**"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it.**

"Four..." Hermione said.

**His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds it was the greyish white of old porridge.**

**"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.**

**Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it high out of his reach.**

"Three." Everyone was looking at them.

**Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.**

**"Vernon! Oh my goodness - Vernon!"**

**They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Harry and Dudley were still in the room. Dudley wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.**

"Two."

**"I want to read that letter," he said loudly. **

"**I want to read it," said Harry furiously, "as it's mine."**

"Good point, Harry," said Dennis.

**"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.**

**Harry didn't move.**

"One."

"**I WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted.**

"Wow, you have a set of lungs!" Dennis said.

"Oh trust me, that is nothing compared to this past summer," Fred declared, grinning.

**"Let me see it!" demanded Dudley.**

"No, because it is Harry's, you great big fat pig!" Dennis shouted.

**"OUT!" roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. **

**Harry and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor.**

**"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, "look at the address - how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don't think they're watching the house?"**

**"Watching - spying - might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly.**

"Why? We have better stuff to do then spy on you, Vernon!" Lee said.

"Maybe because I'm the boy-who-lived and they need to make sure that I'm safe?" Harry suggested.

"Oh yeah, I guess, but if that was true then they would have found out that you had slept in a cupboard, for god's sake."

**"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want -"**

**Harry could see Uncle Vernon's shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen.**

**"No," he said finally. "No, we'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer... Yes, that's best... we won't do anything...**

**"But -"**

**"I'm not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took him in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?"**

"When they started talking like that I thought I was something like a mutant, or something dangerous that would kill people, to tell you the truth," Harry admitted.

**That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon did something he'd never done before; he visited Harry in his cupboard.**

**"Where's my letter?" said Harry, the moment Uncle Vernon had squeezed through the door. "Who's writing to me?"**

**"No one. it was addressed to you by mistake," said Uncle Vernon shortly. "I have burned it."**

**"It was not a mistake," said Harry angrily, "it had my cupboard on it."**

**"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vernon, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.**

"Oh believe me it was. I think I heard his flesh tear because of it!" Harry joked.

**"Er - yes, Harry - about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking... you're really getting a bit big for it... we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley's second bedroom.**

**"Why?" said Harry.**

**"Don't ask questions!" snapped his uncle. "Take this stuff upstairs, now."**

**The Dursleys' house had four bedrooms:**

"Four bedrooms and you slept in a cupboard!?" Angelina screeched.

**one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge), one where Dudley slept, and one where Dudley kept all the toys and things that wouldn't fit into his first bedroom.**

"If he had so many toys that he needed a second bedroom maybe they needed to evaluate what they were spending on him," Andrew stated.

**It only took Harry one trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room. He sat down on the bed and stared around him. Nearly everything in here was broken. The month-old video camera was lying on top of a small, working tank Dudley had once driven over the next door neighbour's dog; in the corner was Dudley's first-ever television set, which he'd put his foot through when his favourite program had been cancelled; there was a large birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Dudley had swapped at school for a real air rifle,**

"I'd rather have the parrot," said George.

**which was up on a shelf with the end all bent because Dudley had sat on it. Other shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they'd never been touched.**

"They were pretty good, too. My favourite one was _Lord of the Flies_... did not really understand much of it, but I liked it! Oh I also liked _The Outsiders_," Harry said.

"I thought you didn't like reading, Harry?" Hermione commented.

"Ahh no, I never said I did not like reading. I love reading, just not the assigned stuff that the teachers give."

**From downstairs came the sound of Dudley bawling at his mother, I don't want him in there... I need that room... make him get out..."**

"Why do you need that room? To put more junk in? Harry needs it more than you do!" Ron yelled in frustration.

**Harry sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday he'd have given anything to be up here. Today he'd rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it.**

**Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He'd screamed, whacked his father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn't have his room back.**

"If Dad or Mum ever caught us doing any of those we would have been put over their knee and spanked!" Ginny commented, appalled by Dudley's behaviour.

"Dennis and I had to go out to the wood pile and haul wood," Colin said.

**Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he'd opened the letter in the hall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.**

**When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Harry, made Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall.**

"Isn't throwing a hissy fit something a four or five year old would do? Maybe a six or seven year old, but not an eleven year old!" Kenneth exploded.

**Then he shouted, "There's another one! '**_**Mr H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive**_** -'"**

**With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry right behind him. Uncle Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind. After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick**

"That hurt, but it was mainly Uncle Vernon who got hit with it. Although, I did get a good sized egg on my head from slamming into the wall. What?" Harry said when everyone looked at him.

"Nothing, I guess we are just surprised at how calmly you are talking about this," said Ginny.

"Well it already happened, so no point in getting mad at it."

**Uncle Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath, with Harry's letter clutched in his hand.**

**"Go to your cupboard - I mean, your bedroom," he wheezed at Harry. "Dudley - go - just go."**

**Harry walked round and round his new room.**

"Something you do a lot when you get mad or are worried," Ron commented. "I think there is a permanent wear through the carpet in the boy's dormitory."

**Someone knew he had moved out of his cupboard and they seemed to know he hadn't received his first letter. Surely that meant they'd try again? And this time he'd make sure they didn't fail. He had a plan.**

"Oh, this should be good," said Hermione. "Harry, you are my best friend and I need to be honest with you; you are great when you come up with plans, but your plans kinda don't really go the way you'd like them to."

**The repaired alarm clock**

"You repaired an alarm clock?" Dean was impressed.

"Yeah, I like tinkering around with stuff that is broken to see if I can make it work," Harry shrugged.

**rang at six o'clock the next morning.**

"I'm surprised that you needed one, you are normally up by 5:30 or 6:00 AM without one," Neville commented.

**Harry turned it off quickly and dressed silently. He mustn't wake the Dursleys. He stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.**

**He was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. His heart hammered as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door -**

**Harry leapt into the air; he'd trodden on something big and squashy on the doormat - something alive!**

**Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Harry realised that the big, squashy something had been his uncle's face.**

"Ha ha... fat ant!" George said quickly at the look on Angelina's face.

**Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do. He shouted at Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea.**

"I have been meaning to ask you, Harry, do you like to cook or did you just do it because your horrid excuse for an aunt and uncle made you?" Ginny asked.

"I really do like to cook. I wish I could get more time to but I can't unfortunately... I think potions would not be so hard if Snape was not breathing down my back, waiting for me to mess up because I could use what I know from cooking and apply it to Potions."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because Potions is a lot like cooking; you have to get the temperature right, and you have to 'cook it' for a certain time and what not."

"Hmm... I never thought of it like that!" Hermione said.

**Harry shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Vernon's lap. Harry could see three letters addressed in green ink.**

"**I want -" he began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes.**

"That is illegal! Not giving someone their mail is a federal offence!" Dennis said, Collin nodding along with him.

**Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.**

**"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up."**

"Yeah, I don't think so!" Harry started laughing at the memory.

**"I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon."**

**"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.**

"That is an easy mistake; her fruitcake is hard as a rock," Harry commented.

**On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Harry. As they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.**

"Oh, that was funny! Dudley came running out with his pants halfway up, screaming, saying that the mail carrier was a peeping tom!" Harry laughed.

**Uncle Vernon stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" as he worked, and jumped at small noises.**

"Has he gone mad?" Hermione questioned.

"He has been mad for a long time," Harry laughed.

**On Saturday, things began to get out of hand.**

"What was it the rest of the week then? A slight inconvenience?" asked Patricia.

**Twenty-four letters to Harry found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor.**

**"Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asked Harry in amazement.**

"I did, I think I wrote you a letter every year since I was four," Neville admitted shyly.

"Why?"

"I gave you a birthday card every year! Our birthdays are only a day apart, did you not know that?"

"No. Thanks, Neville."

**On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.**

**"No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today -"**

**Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one.**

"Practising your Seeker skills already?" Angelina asked.

"No, it was just habit for me to jump up and grab one, I think I had gotten one or two before... well, just read."

**"Out! OUT!"**

**Uncle Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall**.

"Knocked the breath out of me."

**When Aunt Petunia and Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.**

**"That does it," said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his moustache at the same time. I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"**

**He looked so dangerous with half his moustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag.**

**They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while. **

**"Shake'em off... shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this.**

**They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.**

"I have gone my whole life without blowing up an alien on a computer ... instead I blew up Marge." Harry said

"You blew up who?" asked Alicia.

"Oh, third book."

**Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering...**

**They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day.**

"That sounds like a gourmet meal," Fred commented sarcastically.

'It's better than what we had for our next meal,' Harry informed him.

**They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.**

**"'Scuse me, but is one of you Mr H. Potter? Only I got about an 'undred of these at the front desk."**

**She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:**

_**Mr H. Potter**_

_**Room 17**_

_**Railview Hotel**_

_**Cokeworth**_

**Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared.**

"She stared but did not do anything, why not?" Ginny shouted.

**"I'll take them," said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.**

**"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn't seem to hear her. **

**Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a ploughed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.**

**"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon. Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.**

"Like I said before, he went mad a long time ago," said Harry.

**It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley sniveled.**

**"It's Monday," he told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television. "**

**Monday. This reminded Harry of something. If it was Monday - and you could usually count on Dudley to know the days the week, because of television - then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry's eleventh birthday.**

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Harry... happy birthday to you!" Fred and George sang.

"Thank you... I think."

**Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun - last year, the Dursleys had given him a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks.**

"This year let's get him something really nice... something from both of us," Hermione whispered to Ron.

"Is that why you always get us something nice?" Katie Bell asked, remembering the book of Scottish myths he had gotten her for her birthday last year.

"Yeah, and you are my friends."

**Still, you weren't eleven every day.**

"Wrong. You are eleven for 364 days unless it is a leap year then you are eleven for 365 days, not counting your birthday," Hermione informed them.

"Okay, thanks for the math lesson, Hermione, but I don't really think anyone cares!" Ron said.

**Uncle Vernon was back and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he'd bought.**

**"Found the perfect place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"**

**It was very cold outside the car.**

"Well, no dur!" said Colin.

**Uncle Vernon was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.**

**"Storm forecast for tonight!" said Uncle Vernon gleefully, clapping his hands together. "And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his boat!"**

**A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-grey water below them.**

"Yes, let's get into a boat that some creepy old guy let us have. Has he never watched a horror movie?" Katie exclaimed.

**"I've already got us some rations," said Uncle Vernon, "so all aboard!"**

**It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.**

**The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.**

**Uncle Vernon's rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas.**

"That was not too bad, I had Dudley's banana and then he stole my crisps."

**He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shrivelled up.**

**"Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" he said cheerfully.**

**He was in a very good mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail. Harry privately agreed, though the thought didn't cheer him up at all.**

**As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few mouldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.**

**The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Harry couldn't sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger.**

Hermione sighed. Here were two boys... one who had everything and one who did not until he found out he was a wizard. Why was fate so cruel to her best friend?

**Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.**

**Five minutes to go. Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn't going to fall in, although he might be warmer if it did.**

"Oh god, Harry, must you be such a pessimist?" asked Hermione.

**Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that he'd be able to steal one somehow.**

**Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?**

"I hope not," Ginny whispered.

**One minute to go and he'd be eleven. Thirty seconds... twenty ... ten... nine - maybe he'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him - three... two... one...**

**BOOM.**

**The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in**.

"Is that the end of the chapter?" asked George.

"Yep," Ginny answered.

"Good, bed then we can read some more tomorrow."

"Could you guys not come up into the boys' dormitory yet? Ron and I need to talk to Harry about some stuff," Hermione asked the other Gryffindor fifth year boys.

"Like what?" Harry asked as Ron grabbed him and pulled him to his feet and marched him up the stairs and into the dormitory.


	6. A talk with Ron and Hermione

**(I do not own Harry Potter. Thanks to Azaelia Silmarwen for looking this over.) **

Ron and Hermione dragged a bewildered Harry upstairs and gently pushed him onto his bed.

"Spill," said Ron, glaring.

"Spill what?"

"Why didn't tell us that you were being abused by your aunt and uncle?" Hermione questioned.

Harry sighed, ran a hand through his hair nervously and began pacing.

"Because I thought you guys would not believe me… no one did." Harry looked at Ron and Hermione. "I remember once I told a teacher that I was being abused after we watched a movie about abuse and what to do if you think someone is being abused when I was in fourth grade. The teacher had social services come by the house to look around and they asked Uncle Vernon questions. He said that I was a pathological liar and he was sorry that they made the trip over there for nothing. He said that he would make sure I was punished."

"How would he have punished you?" asked Ron, almost afraid of the answer.

"Normally Aunt Petunia would do the punishments; no food or I was locked in my cupboard for the night. Uncle Vernon would hit me, but it was not that often. He would threaten me, but he and Petunia let Dudley do most of the beating up. After I told the teacher and what not I learned to never talk about it and after a while people stopped looking hard enough for the bruises or how skinny I was for my age. After a while people just did not seem to care."

Harry went over, sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands, blinking rapidly.

"Well, we would have," Hermione said, going over and putting her arms around him. "We would have had the proof and everything. Ron, Fred and George had to go to your home..."

"House, 'Mione. I never really considered that place a home."

"House then. Ron, Fred and George had to go to your house and rescue you because your jerk of an uncle put bars on your window. I think that would count for some type of investigation from the wizarding child services."

"Uncle Vernon would most likely hide it or lie again," Harry said pointedly.

Hermione opened her mouth to argue but Harry, getting angry, jumped up from the bed, cutting her off.

"Look! I appreciate that you want to talk to me about this, really I do, but I don't want to right now, okay? So please, can we just go to bed and forget about it?"

"Yeah, we can go to bed," said Ron. "But no, we are not going to forget about it. We will be writing to Sirius and Lupin about this tomorrow morning."

Harry sighed and watched Hermione go out the door. The rest of the boys came in and changed into sleepwear. Harry, lying on his back, began to think.


	7. The keeper of the keys

**(Hear is the next chapter folks. I do not own Harry Potter all rights go to the wonderful JK Rowling and as always thank you to ****Azaelia Silmarwen for looking it over.) **

The next morning, when Harry made his way down to the common room, he found everyone was already there waiting for him.

"Come on, Harry!" Fred all but whined. "Hurry up and sit down so I can read."

"We have been waiting for hours!" Ron explained. "Hermione would not let me come and wake you up."

"Can't I get something to eat first?" Harry questioned as he made his way to the portrait hole.

"No need, I got you something," Hermione said as she handed him a cup of coffee and a plate with some toast and eggs.

"Thanks."

"Now can I read?" Fred asked impatiently.

"Go ahead," Harry said, sitting down and balancing the plate on his knees.

"**The Keeper of the Keys**," Fred began to read. "**BOOM.**

Everyone jumped as Fred yelled it.

**They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake. **

**"Where's the cannon?" he said stupidly.**

**There was a crash behind them and Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room. He was holding a rifle in his hands - now they knew what had been in the long, thin package he had brought with them.**

**"Who's there?" he shouted. "I warn you - I'm armed!"**

"We all are," said Ginny. "Just when I thought he couldn't get any stupider, he states the obvious."

"It means that he has a gun," Katie said quickly.

"Oh. Why on earth would he bring a gun into a room with kids in it? That's just stupid."

**There was a pause. Then -**

**SMASH!**

"Will you quit yelling the blasted words? Just say it like a normal person or I'll hex you into the next week!" Angelina yelled.

**The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off its hinges and with a deafening crash landed flat on the floor.**

"What an entrance!" George laughed.

**A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair.**

"Hagrid is the BFG," Hermione giggled

"The what?" many people asked.

"Big Friendly Giant."

"Or in this case, the Big Friendly Half-Giant," said Harry.

**The giant squeezed his way into the hut, stooping so that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down, picked up the door, and fitted it easily back into its frame. The noise of the storm outside dropped a little. He turned to look at them all.**

**"Couldn't make us a cup o' tea, could yeh? It's not been an easy journey..."**

**He strode over to the sofa where Dudley sat frozen with fear.**

"Typical," Harry muttered.

"Yeah well, where were you when he broke in?" asked Kenneth.

"I was in the middle of the room watching," Harry answered.

**"Budge up, yeh great lump," said the stranger.**

"How long are you going to call him, 'the stranger'?" asked Natalie.

"At this point in time I don't know his name, so he will be called 'the stranger' until I learn it," replied Harry.

**Dudley squeaked and ran to hide behind his mother, who was crouching, terrified, behind Uncle Vernon.**

**"An' here's Harry!" said the giant.**

"There you are!" said George

"Here he is!" Fred exclaimed.

**Harry looked up into the fierce, wild, shadowy face and saw that the beetle eyes were crinkled in a smile.**

**"Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," said the giant. "Yeh look a lot like yet dad, but yeh've got yet mom's eyes."**

**Uncle Vernon made a funny rasping noise.**

"**I demand that you leave at once, sit!" he said. "You are breaking and entering!"**

"Hmmm, not really,' Jack Sloper said in a bored tone. 'To tell you the truth, it is an old abandoned hut. That is not breaking and entering, not really, unless you want to get technical about it."

**"Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune,"**

"Prune?" Lauran questioned.

**said the giant; he reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of Uncle Vernon's hands, bent it into a knot as easily as if it had been made of rubber, and threw it into a corner of the room.**

**Uncle Vernon made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on.**

"So 'squeak' or would it be 'eek'?" Ron wondered.

**"Anyway - Harry," said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, "a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here - I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right."**

**From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.**

"My first birthday cake," Harry said smiling.

**Harry looked up at the giant. He meant to say thank you, but the words got lost on the way to his mouth, and what he said instead was, "Who are you?"**

"I was going to get after you about your manners, but then I remembered that you did not know Hagrid's name or why he was there, so I'll let it slide," said Hermione.

**The giant chuckled.**

**"True, I haven't introduced meself. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts."**

**He held out an enormous hand and shook Harry's whole arm.**

"That kinda hurt," Harry complained.

"Better than his hugs," said Ron.

"True, very true," Harry agreed as he absently rubbed his ribs as he remembered said hugs.

**"What about that tea then, eh?" he said, rubbing his hands together. "I'd not say no ter summat stronger if yeh've got it, mind."**

"There are children there and you want to drink?" Ginny questioned.

"So?" Harry said, not seeing the problem.

"Harry," said Ginny, "I know my parents drink, but they _never_ drank in front of us kids until we turned fifteen."

"I still don't get what the big deal is."

"Harry, you just don't do it around kids or they will think that it is okay to drink because they see adults doing it, and soon they are underage drinking… at least that is my opinion," said Ginny.

**His eyes fell on the empty grate with the shrivelled chip bags in it and he snorted. He bent down over the fireplace; they couldn't see what he was doing but when he drew back a second later, there was a roaring fire there. It filled the whole damp hut with flickering light and Harry felt the warmth wash over him as though he'd sunk into a hot bath.**

**The giant sat back down on the sofa, which sagged under his weight, and began taking all sorts of things out of the pockets of his coat: a copper kettle, a squashy package of sausages, a poker, a teapot, several chipped mugs, and a bottle of some amber liquid that he took a swig from before starting to make tea.**

Ginny made a disapproving noise resulting in Harry looking over at her.

"Ginny, it was pumpkin juice, not alcohol," he said.

**Soon the hut was full of the sound and smell of sizzling sausage. Nobody said a thing while the giant was working, but as he slid the first six fat, juicy, slightly burnt sausages from the poker, Dudley fidgeted a little. Uncle Vernon said sharply, "Don't touch anything he gives you, Dudley."**

"Why? It's not like Hagrid's going to poison him," said Alicia.

"Well Dinky Duddydums doesn't need any food. He's fat enough already," Ron said laughing at the stupid nickname Harry's aunt had given him.

**The giant chuckled darkly.**

**"Yet great puddin' of a son don' need fattenin' anymore, Dursley, don' worry."**

"Hear hear!" Hermione and Alicia said in unison, before looking at each other, smiling.

**He passed the sausages to Harry, who was so hungry he had never tasted anything so wonderful, but he still couldn't take his eyes off the giant. Finally, as nobody seemed about to explain anything, he said, "I'm sorry, but I still don't really know who you are."**

**The giant took a gulp of tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.**

**"Call me Hagrid," he said, "everyone does. An' like I told yeh, I'm Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts - yeh'll know all about Hogwarts, o' course."**

"No, he doesn't because his idjits of an uncle and aunt never told him!" Harry commented bitterly.

"Idjits?" Romilda questioned.

"I got tired of saying idiot so I call them idjits."

"Nice one, Harry! By the way, you _do _realise that you just referred to yourself in second person, right?" Ron laughed

"Shut up!" Harry grumbled, gently shoving him.

**"Er - no," said Harry.**

**Hagrid looked shocked.**

**"Sorry," Harry said quickly.**

"Not your fault, Harry," a seventh year Harry knew by face, but not by name, said gently.

**"Sorry?" barked Hagrid, turning to stare at the Dursleys, who shrank back into the shadows. "It' s them as should be sorry! I knew yeh weren't gettin' yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn't even know abou' Hogwarts, fer cryin' out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yet parents learned it all?"**

**"All what?" asked Harry.**

**"ALL WHAT?" Hagrid thundered. "Now wait jus' one second!"**

**He had leapt to his feet. In his anger he seemed to fill the whole hut. The Dursleys were cowering against the wall.**

**"Do you mean ter tell me," he growled at the Dursleys, "that this boy - this boy! - knows nothin' abou' - about ANYTHING?"**

**Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks weren't bad.**

**"I know some things," he said. "I can, you know, do math and stuff."**

"What was your favourite subject in school, Harry?" Hermione asked suddenly "I liked Math and English."

"I kinda liked science because of the experiments we did, but I also liked History," Harry replied, slightly startled by her abrupt question.

**But Hagrid simply waved his hand and said, "About our world, I mean. Your world. My world. Yer parents' world."**

**"What world?"**

**Hagrid looked as if he was about to explode.**

**"DURSLEY!" he boomed.**

**Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like "Mimblewimble." Hagrid stared wildly at Harry.**

**"But yeh must know about yeh mum and dad," he said. "I mean, they're famous. You're famous."**

"Yeah Harry, you are famous!" said Ron.

"Hmm, I kinda didn't hear that part, to tell you the truth," Harry admitted. "It didn't really hit me until we were in the Leaky Caldron."

"Figures," Hermione muttered.

**"What? My - my mum and dad weren't famous, were they?"**

**"Yeh don' know... yeh don' know..." Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing Harry with a bewildered stare.**

**"Yeh don' know what yeh are?" he said finally.**

"Yeah Harry, you really are a physic person who is just imagining all of this," Fred said solemnly.

"You really do need to take your meds more often, young man," said George, waggling his finger at Harry, who looked bewildered.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Harry asked as the twins' roared with laughter.

"Moving on then," said Ginny, looking at her brothers with amusement.

**Uncle Vernon suddenly found his voice.**

"Such a shame," Romilda sighed.

**"Stop!" he commanded. "Stop right there, sit! I forbid you to tell the boy anything!"**

**A braver man than Vernon Dursley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage.**

**"You never told him? Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him?**

"I still don't know what was in the letter," Harry sighed. "And I doubt I ever will."

**I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you've kept it from him all these years?"**

**"Kept what from me?" said Harry eagerly.**

**"STOP! I FORBID YOU!" yelled Uncle Vernon in panic.**

**Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror.**

"Over dramatic," Loren sang.

**"Ah, go boil yet heads, both of yeh," said Hagrid. "Harry - yet a wizard."**

"Short and to the point… I like it." Colin nodded approvingly.

**There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.**

**"- a what?" gasped Harry.**

**"A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, "an' a thumpin' good'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit.**

_That's true,' _Hermione thought. _How else would of he helped the DA?_

**With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter."**

"Finally," many people commented in unison.

**Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to **_**Mr H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea**_**. He pulled out the letter and read:**

_**HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY**_

_**Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE**_

_**(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)**_

_**Dear Mr Potter,**_

_**We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.**_

_**Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.**_

_**Yours sincerely,**_

_**Minerva McGonagall,**_

_**Deputy Headmistress**_

**Questions exploded inside Harry's head like fireworks** **and he couldn't decide which to ask first. **

**After a few minutes he stammered, "What does it mean, they await my owl?"**

**"Gallopin' Gorgons, that reminds me," said Hagrid, clapping a hand to his forehead with enough force to knock over a cart horse, and from yet another pocket inside his overcoat he pulled an owl - a real, live, rather ruffled-looking owl - a long quill, and a roll of parchment. With his tongue between his teeth he scribbled a note that Harry could read upside down:**

"I can't even read it right side up," Ron said

_**Dear Professor Dumbledore,**_

_**Given Harry his letter.**_

_**Taking him to buy his things tomorrow.**_

_**Weather's horrible.**_

"'Weather's horrible'? Is that how he ends it?" Dean questioned, looking puzzled.

_**Hope you're well.**_

_**Hagrid**_

"Well okay _that _is how he really ends it, but weather's horrible?"

**Hagrid rolled up the note, gave it to the owl, which clamped it in its beak, went to the door, and threw the owl out into the storm. Then he came back and sat down as though this was as normal as talking on the telephone.**

"Yeah, but using a telephone is pretty easy as well. You just have to remember _not _to yell into it," Harry said, glaring at Ron.

**Harry realised his mouth was open and closed it quickly.**

**"Where was I?" said Hagrid, but at that moment, Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight.**

"Dang, I'd forgotten all about them," said Ron.

**"He's not going," he said.**

**Hagrid grunted.**

**"I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him," he said.**

**"A what?" said Harry, interested.**

**"A Muggle," said Hagrid, "it's what we call non-magic folk like them. An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on."**

**"We swore when we took him in we'd put a stop to that rubbish," said Uncle Vernon, "swore we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!"**

**"You knew?" said Harry. "You knew I'm a - a wizard?"**

**"Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. "Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school-and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was - a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"**

"Well they should be proud to have her. I think Petunia is jealous," said Ginny.`

"That, but I also get the feeling that her and my mum where close as girls. Then, when Mum got her letter and went off to school, they slowly drifted apart. I think she's bitter because our world had taken her sister both metaphorically, as someone who is a Muggle-born witch, and figuratively, meaning that she died by the hand of a wizard, into a world that her sister did not and could not understand," said Harry.

A stunned silence fell over the little crowd. After a few minutes, Fred picked up the book and continued to read.

**She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years.**

**"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as - as - abnormal -**

"Well she did get that part right. You are strange and abnormal, in a good way though," Neville said quickly as Harry sent a glare at him.

**and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"**

**Harry had gone very white.**

"Oh dear, one of the danger signs that Harry is mad," Ginny sang.

**As soon as he found his voice he said, "Blown up? You told me they died in a car crash!"**

**"CAR CRASH!" roared Hagrid, jumping up so angrily that the Dursleys scuttled back to their corner. "How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! A scandal! Harry Potter not knowin' his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!" **

**"But why? What happened?" Harry asked urgently.**

**The anger faded from Hagrid's face. He looked suddenly anxious.**

**"I never expected this," he said, in a low, worried voice. "I had no idea, when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin' hold of yeh, how much yeh didn't know. Ah, Harry, I don' know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh - but someone's gotta - yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin'."**

"It would have been interesting if you had," George commented mildly.

"Would not! I would think that I had really gone mad!" Harry snapped.

**He threw a dirty look at the Dursleys.**

"**Well, it's best yeh know as much as I can tell yeh - mind, I can't tell yeh everythin', it's a great myst'ry, parts of it..."**

**He sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds, and then said, "It begins, I suppose, with - with a person called - but it's incredible yeh don't know his name, everyone in our world knows -"**

"Yeah well, I haven't so, Humour me," Harry said irritably.

**"Who?"**

**"Well - I don' like sayin' the name if I can help it. No one does."**

**"Why not?"**

**"Gulpin' gargoyles, Harry, people are still scared. Blimey, this is difficult. See, there was this wizard who went... bad. As bad as you could go. Worse. Worse than worse. His name was..."**

**Hagrid gulped, but no words came out.**

**"Could you write it down?" Harry suggested.**

Harry had gone strangely quiet and started staring into the mug of coffee that he held in his hands.

**"Nah -can't spell it. Alright – Voldemort." Hagrid shuddered. "Don' make me say it again. Anyway, this - this wizard, about twenty years ago now, started lookin' fer followers. Got 'em, too - some were afraid, some just wanted a bit o' his power, 'cause he was gettin' himself power, all right. Dark days, Harry. Didn't know who ter trust, didn't dare get friendly with strange wizards or witches... terrible things happened. He was takin' over. 'Course, some stood up to him - an' he killed 'em. Horribly. One o' the only safe places left was Hogwarts. Reckon Dumbledore's the only one You-Know-Who was afraid of. Didn't dare try takin' the school, not jus' then, anyway.**

**"Now, yer mum an' dad were as good a witch an' wizard as I ever knew. Head boy an' girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose the myst'ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get 'em on his side before... probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore ter want anythin' ter do with the Dark Side.**

**"Maybe he thought he could persuade 'em... maybe he just wanted 'em outta the way. All anyone knows is, he turned up in the village where you was all living, on Halloween ten years ago. You was just a year old. He came ter yer house an' - an' -"**

**Hagrid suddenly pulled out a very dirty, spotted handkerchief and blew his nose with a sound like a foghorn.**

**"Sorry," he said. "But it's that sad - knew yer mum an' dad, an' nicer people yeh couldn't find - anyway...**

**"You-Know-Who killed 'em. An' then - an' this is the real myst'ry of the thing - he tried to kill you, too. Wanted ter make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin' by then. But he couldn't do it. Never wondered how you got that mark on yer forehead? That was no ordinary cut. That's what yeh get when a Powerful, evil curse touches yeh - took care of yer mum an' dad an' yer house, even - but it didn't work on you, an' that's why yer famous, Harry. No one ever lived after he decided ter kill 'em, no one except you, an' he'd killed some o' the best witches an' wizards of the age - the McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts**

The Weasley kids went quiet at that, silently mourning for their uncles.

**- an' you was only a baby, an' you lived."**

"Thank you, Mum," Harry breathed very quietly.

**Something very painful was going on in Harry's mind. As Hagrid's story came to a close, he saw again the blinding flash of green light, more clearly than he had ever remembered it before - and he remembered something else, for the first time in his life: a high, cold, cruel laugh.**

Harry shuttered, remembering the graveyard. Everyone looked at him wondering what he was thinking about.

**Hagrid was watching him sadly.**

**"Took yeh from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore's orders. Brought yeh ter this lot..."**

"Harry, in the first chapter Hagrid told Dumbledore that he took you from Sirius, right?" Hermione whispered.

"Yeah, why?"

"Well it's just that your mum and dad put him down as your legal guardian, so Hagrid had no right to take you from Sirius, even if he had orders from Dumbledore. So, technically, Dumbledore kidnapped you."

Harry had nothing to say to that and went quiet, thinking.

**"Load of old tosh," said Uncle Vernon. **

**Harry jumped; he had almost forgotten that the Dursleys were there. Uncle Vernon certainly seemed to have got back his courage. He was glaring at Hagrid and his fists were clenched.**

**"Now, you listen here, boy," he snarled, "I accept there's something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn't have cured**

"Don't you dare tell me he beat you, Harry, or I will… I will… I will let Padfoot on them!" Ginny yelled, looking at Harry with such a fierce stare that many people gulped.

Harry looked her right in the eye, unflinchingly.

"No Ginny. Uncle Vernon never beat me."

**- and as for all this about your parents, well, they were weirdos, no denying it, and the world's better off without them in my opinion**

"Well no one did, you fat asshole!" Katie yelled.

"How dare you say that about someone's parents?" Ginny exclaimed furiously.

**- asked for all they got, getting mixed up with these wizarding types - just what I expected, always knew they'd come to a sticky end -"**

"Someone please shut this porker up or I'll punch something," Dean growled.

**But at that moment, Hagrid leapt from the sofa and drew a battered pink umbrella from inside his coat. Pointing this at Uncle Vernon like a sword, he said, "I'm warning you, Dursley -I'm warning you - one more word... "**

**In danger of being speared on the end of an umbrella by a bearded giant, Uncle Vernon's courage failed again; he flattened himself against the wall and fell silent.**

**"That's better," said Hagrid, breathing heavily and sitting back down on the sofa, which this time sagged right down to the floor.**

**Harry, meanwhile, still had questions to ask, hundreds of them.**

"When don't you?" Dean asked seriously.

"When I have all the answers that I need," replied Harry.

**"But what happened to Vol-,**

"Even then you never said 'You-Know-Who'!" Ron said laughing.

**sorry - I mean, You-Know-Who?"**

**"Good question, Harry. Disappeared. Vanished. Same night he tried ter kill you. Makes yeh even more famous. That's the biggest myst'ry, see... he was gettin' more an' more powerful - why'd he go?**

**"Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die. Some say he's still out there, bidin' his time,**

"Yeah, he was," Harry whispered.

**but I don' believe it. People who was on his side came back ter ours. Some of 'em came outta kinda trances. Don~ reckon they could've done if he was comin' back.**

"That is true as well, though... something to look up." Hermione wrote it down on her own list of stuff to look up.

**"Most of us reckon he's still out there somewhere but lost his powers. Too weak to carry on. 'Cause somethin' about you finished him, Harry. There was somethin' goin' on that night he hadn't counted on - I dunno what it was, no one does - but somethin' about you stumped him, alright."**

"A lot of stuff stumps people about you," said Ron. "You still stump Hermione and me, and we're your best friends!"

**Hagrid looked at Harry with warmth and respect blazing in his eyes, but Harry, instead of feeling pleased and proud, felt quite sure there had been a horrible mistake. A wizard? Him? How could he possibly be? He'd spent his life being clouted by Dudley, and bullied by Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon; if he was really a wizard, why hadn't they been turned into warty toads every time they'd tried to lock him in his cupboard? If he'd once defeated the greatest sorcerer in the world, how come Dudley had always been able to kick him around like a football?**

**"Hagrid," he said quietly, "I think you must have made a mistake. I don't think I can be a wizard."**

"Well if you weren't, school would be very dull," said Hermione, while Ron nodded in agreement.

**To his surprise, Hagrid chuckled.**

**"Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?"**

**Harry looked into the fire. Now he came to think about it... every odd thing that had ever made his aunt and uncle furious with him had happened when he, Harry, had been upset or angry... chased by Dudley's gang, he had somehow found himself out of their reach... dreading going to school with that ridiculous haircut, he'd managed to make it grow back... and the very last time Dudley had hit him, hadn't he got his revenge, without even realising he was doing it? Hadn't he set a boa constrictor on him?**

**Harry looked back at Hagrid, smiling, and saw that Hagrid was positively beaming at him.**

**"See?" said Hagrid. "Harry Potter, not a wizard - you wait, you'll be right famous at Hogwarts."**

"For a lot of things, not just your story. You have made quite a name for yourself, Harry," said Colin.

"Really?" Harry looked surprised.

"Yeah, you're the youngest Seeker of the century, the boy whom you never want to piss off, mass majority of the girls' heartthrob, and one of the nicest males in school. Those are your nice titles; you have countless other ones that are not at all pleasant."

**But Uncle Vernon wasn't going to give in without a fight.**

"No offence Harry, but your uncle sounds a lot like you in this sentence" Ginny said

"How so?" Harry asked, making a face.

"Well the whole, not going to give in without a fight bit," Ginny explained.

"Oh, I see."

**"Haven't I told you he's not going?" he hissed. "He's going to Stonewall High and he'll be grateful for it. I've read those letters and he needs all sorts of rubbish - spell books and wands and -"**

"Again that is il -" Dennis started.

"Okay Dennis, we get it. It's illegal to read someone else's mail," Hermione interrupted.

**"If he wants ter go, a great Muggle like you won't stop him," growled Hagrid. "Stop Lily an' James Potter' s son goin' ter Hogwarts! Yer mad. His name's been down ever since he was born. He's off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won't know himself. He'll be with youngsters of his own sort, fer a change, an' he'll be under the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had Albus Dumbled-"**

**"I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL To TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!" yelled Uncle Vernon.**

"Does he have a death wish?" George asked, rubbing his hands together. This should be interesting.

**But he had finally gone too far. Hagrid seized his umbrella and whirled it over his head, "NEVER," he thundered, "- INSULT- ALBUS- DUMBLEDORE- IN- FRONT- OF- ME!"**

**He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley - there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, a sharp squeal, and the next second, Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig's tail poking through a hole in his trousers.**

"Oh Hagrid, that is bloody brilliant!" George exclaimed.

**Uncle Vernon roared. Pulling Aunt Petunia and Dudley into the other room, he cast one last terrified look at Hagrid and slammed the door behind them.**

**Hagrid looked down at his umbrella and stroked his beard.**

**"Shouldn'ta lost me temper," he said ruefully, "but it didn't work anyway. Meant ter turn him into a pig, but I suppose he was so much like a pig anyway there wasn't much left ter do."**

**He cast a sideways look at Harry under his bushy eyebrows.**

**"Be grateful if yeh didn't mention that ter anyone at Hogwarts," he said. "I'm - er - not supposed ter do magic, strictly speakin'. I was allowed ter do a bit ter follow yeh an' get yer letters to yeh an' stuff - one o' the reasons I was so keen ter take on the job."**

**"Why aren't you supposed to do magic?" asked Harry.**

**"Oh, well - I was at Hogwarts meself but I - er - got expelled, ter tell yeh the truth. In me third year. They snapped me wand in half an' everything. But Dumbledore let me stay on as gamekeeper. Great man, Dumbledore." **

**"Why were you expelled?"**

"He will never tell anyone," a sixth year muttered.

**"It's gettin' late and we've got lots ter do tomorrow," said Hagrid loudly. "Gotta get up ter town, get all yer books an' that."**

**He took off his thick black coat and threw it to Harry.**

**"You can kip under that," he said. "Don' mind if it wriggles a bit, I think I still got a couple o' dormice in one o' the pockets."**

"Why would he keep dormice in his pockets?" Katie asked in confusion.

"Maybe for the owl?" Fred said "Chapters done, whos next in reading?"

"Guss I will." Ron said jumping up from the ground and grabbing the book from his hands.


	8. Diagon Alley

**AN: Hears chapter 8. I do not own Harry Potter that goes to JK Rowling. Big thank you to Azaelia Silmarwen for looking this over you rock! **

Ron took the book and cleared his throat.

"**Diagon Alley**," he read out.

**Harry woke early the next morning. Although he could tell it was daylight, he kept his eyes shut tight.**

**"It was a dream, he told himself firmly. "I dreamed a giant called Hagrid came to tell me I was going to a school for wizards. When I open my eyes I'll be at home in my cupboard."**

"But it was not a dream, Harry. It was REAL!" said George, acting like a three year old trying to tell their parents that they really did see a monster in their closet.

**There was suddenly a loud tapping noise.**

_**And there's Aunt Petunia knocking on the door,**_** Harry thought, his heart sinking. But he still didn't open his eyes. It had been such a good dream.**

**Tap. Tap. Tap.**

**"Alright," Harry mumbled, "I'm getting up."**

**He sat up and Hagrid's heavy coat fell off him. The hut was full of sunlight, the storm was over, Hagrid himself was asleep on the collapsed sofa, and there was an owl rapping its claw on the window, a newspaper held in its beak.**

**Harry scrambled to his feet, so happy he felt as though a large balloon was swelling inside him. He went straight to the window and jerked it open. The owl swooped in and dropped the newspaper on top of Hagrid, who didn't wake up.**

"He must be a sound sleeper," Neville commented in amazement.

**The owl then fluttered onto the floor and began to attack Hagrid's coat.**

**"Don't do that."**

**Harry tried to wave the owl out of the way, but it snapped its beak fiercely at him and carried on savaging the coat.**

"Rabid owl?" Ginny questioned.

"No, that is how the_ Prophet _owls are," said Seamus, shaking his head.

**"Hagrid!" said Harry loudly. "There's an owl."**

**"Pay him," Hagrid grunted into the sofa.**

**"What?"**

**"He wants payin' fer deliverin' the paper. Look in the pockets." **

**Hagrid's coat seemed to be made of nothing but pockets - bunches of keys, slug pellets, balls of string, peppermint humbugs, teabags... finally, Harry pulled out a handful of strange-looking coins.**

"No, our money is not strange, Muggle money is strange," Ron declared.

**"Give him five Knuts," said Hagrid sleepily.**

"Why would Hagrid tell Harry to give him five Knuts, if he has no clue what they are?" asked Parvati

**"Knuts?"**

"See."

**"The little bronze ones."**

**Harry counted out five little bronze coins, and the owl held out his leg so Harry could put the money into a small leather pouch tied to it. Then he flew off through the open window.**

**Hagrid yawned loudly, sat up, and stretched.**

"Okay, he lets Harry handle the money then gets up anyway. My question; why?" Katie wondered.

**"Best be Off, Harry, lots ter do today, gotta get up ter London an' buy all yer stuff fer school."**

**Harry was turning over the wizard coins and looking at them. He had just thought of something that made him feel as though the happy balloon inside him had got a puncture.**

"Aww dang! I was hoping the happy balloon was going to stay around." Fred pouted.

**"Um - Hagrid?"**

**"Mm?" said Hagrid, who was pulling on his huge boots.**

**"I haven't got any money - and you heard Uncle Vernon last night ... he won't pay for me to go and learn magic."**

**"Don't worry about that," said Hagrid, standing up and scratching his head. "D'yeh think yer parents didn't leave yeh anything?"**

**"But if their house was destroyed -"**

**"They didn' keep their gold in the house, boy! Nah, first stop fer us is Gringotts. Wizards' bank. Have a sausage, they're not bad cold - an' I wouldn' say no teh a bit o' yer birthday cake, neither."**

**"Wizards have banks?"**

"Ah yeah! Muggles have banks as well," Katie said in amusement.

"Oh sorry for just learning about the wizarding world!" Harry snapped rolling his eyes

**"Just the one. Gringotts. Run by goblins."**

**Harry dropped the bit of sausage he was holding.**

**"Goblins?"**

**"Yeah - so yeh'd be mad ter try an' rob it,**

"So Harry will rob it any day now!" Ginny laughed.

"Hey! I'll admit I may be a little crazy at times, but I would not try to rob Gringotts. I'm not dumb!" Harry stated.

"**I'll tell yeh that. Never mess with goblins, Harry. Gringotts is the safest place in the world fer anything yeh want ter keep safe - 'cept maybe Hogwarts. As a matter o' fact, I gotta visit Gringotts anyway. Fer Dumbledore. Hogwarts business." Hagrid drew himself up proudly. "He usually gets me ter do important stuff fer him. Fetchin' you gettin' things from Gringotts - knows he can trust me, see.**

**"Got everythin'? Come on, then."**

**Harry followed Hagrid out onto the rock. The sky was quite clear now and the sea gleamed in the sunlight. The boat Uncle Vernon had hired was still there, with a lot of water in the bottom after the storm.**

**"How did you get here?" Harry asked, looking around for another boat. **

**"Flew," said Hagrid.**

**"Flew?"**

"He can fly?" asked Dennis.

"He can fly?" Collin repeated.

"Okay, we get it. He can FLY!" Ginny snapped, annoyed.

Collin and Dennis looked at each other and laughed as did Hermione and Harry.

"What? What's so funny?" Ginny demanded.

"Peter Pan, a Muggles book and movie, is about a boy who does not want to grow up and goes to Neverland. He flies to London every night to hear a girl named Wendy tell stories to her brothers, John and Michael. Anyway, one night, in the movie, he makes them fly with pixie dust and happy thoughts. Wendy, John and Michel are flying around the room saying 'We can fly, we can fly, we can fly,' and that just made us think of it," Hermione explained.

**"Yeah - but we'll go back in this. Not s'pposed ter use magic now I've got yeh."**

**They settled down in the boat, Harry still staring at Hagrid, trying to imagine him flying.**

**"Seems a shame ter row, though," said Hagrid, giving Harry another of his sideways looks. "If I was ter - er - speed things up a bit, would yeh mind not mentionin' it at Hogwarts?"**

"If Harry was anything like I was, he would not hesitate at all to see more magic," Hermione said with amusement gleaming in her eyes.

**"Of course not," said Harry, eager to see more magic.**

"See."

**Hagrid pulled out the pink umbrella again, tapped it twice on the side of the boat, and they sped off toward land.**

**"Why would you be mad to try and rob Gringotts?" Harry asked.**

"In the early stages of your plan; getting the layout and seeing what you are up against," Fred joked.

**"Spells - enchantments," said Hagrid, unfolding his newspaper as he spoke. "They say there's dragons guardin' the highsecurity vaults. And then yeh gotta find yer way - Gringotts is hundreds of miles under London, see. Deep under the Underground. Yeh'd die of hunger tryin' ter get out, even if yeh did manage ter get yer hands on summat."**

**Harry sat and thought about this while Hagrid read his newspaper, the Daily Prophet. Harry had learned from Uncle Vernon that people liked to be left alone while they did this, but it was very difficult, he'd never had so many questions in his life.**

**"Ministry o' Magic messin' things up as usual," Hagrid muttered, turning the page.**

**"There's a Ministry of Magic?" Harry asked, before he could stop himself.**

"Yeah, and they are bloody stupid," Harry grumbled.

**"'Course," said Hagrid. "They wanted Dumbledore fer Minister, o' course, but he'd never leave Hogwarts, so old Cornelius Fudge got the job. Bungler if ever there was one. So he pelts Dumbledore with owls every morning, askin' fer advice."**

**"But what does a Ministry of Magic do?"**

"Nothing whatsoever," said Dean.

**"Well, their main job is to keep it from the Muggles that there's still witches an' wizards up an' down the country."**

**"Why?"**

**"Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone'd be wantin' magic solutions to their problems. Nah, we're best left alone."**

**At this moment the boat bumped gently into the harbor wall. Hagrid folded up his newspaper, and they clambered up the stone steps onto the street.**

**Passers-by stared a lot at Hagrid as they walked through the little town to the station. Harry couldn't blame them. Not only was Hagrid twice as tall as anyone else, he kept pointing at perfectly ordinary things like parking meters and saying loudly, "See that, Harry? Things these Muggles dream up, eh?"**

"Maybe to you they were normal, but to Hagrid, and most other pureblood wizards, they are odd," Angelina commented.

**"Hagrid," said Harry, panting a bit as he ran to keep up, "did you say there are dragons at Gringotts?"**

**"Well, so they say," said Hagrid. "Crikey, I'd like a dragon."**

**"You'd like one?"**

**"Wanted one ever since I was a kid - here we go."**

"I wonder if he ever got one," Alicia wondered aloud.

Harry Ron and Hermione looked at each other and groaned.

"I'd take that as a yes. How on earth did he get one?"

"It'll come up in the book I suspect," Ron muttered.

**They had reached the station. There was a train to London in five minutes' time. Hagrid, who didn't understand "Muggle money," as he called it, gave the bills to Harry so he could buy their tickets.**

**People stared more than ever on the train. Hagrid took up two seats and sat knitting what looked like a canary-yellow circus tent.**

**"Still got yer letter, Harry?" he asked as he counted stitches. Harry took the parchment envelope out of his pocket.**

**"Good," said Hagrid. "There's a list there of everything yeh need."**

**Harry unfolded a second piece of paper he hadn't noticed the night before, and read:**

_**HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY**_

_**UNIFORM**_

___**First-year students will require:**_

___**1. Three sets of plain work robes (black)**_

___**2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear**_

"Why? We neverwear them, except for the welcoming and leaving feast," Harry commented.

___**3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)**_

___**4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)**_

___**Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry name tags**_

_**COURSE BOOKS**_

___**All students should have a copy of each of the following:**_

___**The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk**_

___**A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot**_

___**Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling**_

___**A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration by Emetic Switch**_

___**One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore**_

___**Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger**_

___**Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander**_

___**The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble**_

_**OTHER EQUIPMENT**_

___**wand**_

_**cauldron (pewter, standard size 2) set**_

___**glass or crystal phials**_

___**telescope set**_

___**brass scales**_

___**Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad**_

___**PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS**_

**"Can we buy all this in London?" Harry wondered aloud.**

"Yes, if you know where to go," Ron said, trying to sound mysterious.

**"If yeh know where to go," said Hagrid.**

**Harry had never been to London before.**

"You'd never been to London?" Katie exclaimed. "My mum and dad used to take me to the city a lot when I was younger. I loved stopping at the Tower of London, but Mum didn't see why I had such a morbid fascination with it."

"You have to remember who I grew up with,' replied Harry. 'I think it would be fun to take a tour of London some time."

**Although Hagrid seemed to know where he was going, he was obviously not used to getting there in an ordinary way. He got stuck in the ticket barrier on the Underground, and complained loudly that the seats were too small and the trains too slow.**

**"I don't know how the Muggles manage without magic," he said as they climbed a broken-down escalator that led up to a bustling road lined with shops.**

**Hagrid was so huge that he parted the crowd easily; all Harry had to do was keep close behind him. They passed book shops and music stores,**

"I think I may have to go back to that music store someday and look around. I wonder if they would have any Green Day," Harry muttered thoughtfully to himself.

'I didn't know your aunt and uncle let you listen to music, Harry. I didn't even know you liked music," Hermione commented.

"I have a lot of likes and dislikes ,'Mione,' replied Harry. 'I would listen to whatever my aunt had on the wireless. It was mostly oldie music; The Beatles, Billy Joel, Asia, Lretta Lynn, Patsy Cline. Sometimes she would even put it on a different station and listen to some newer artists. She would turn it up a little so she could hear it from the living room and because of that; you could hear it throughout the house. I love Asia's, _'Heat of the Moment'_; very good song."

"You should listen to some wizarding bands then, Harry. I have a tape of the Weird Sisters if you would like to barrow it," Parvati offered.

**hamburger restaurants and cinemas, but nowhere that looked as if it could sell you a magic wand. This was just an ordinary street full of ordinary people. Could there really be piles of wizard gold buried miles beneath them? Were there really shops that sold spell books and broomsticks? Might this not all be some huge joke that the Dursleys had cooked up? If Harry hadn't known that the Dursleys had no sense of humour, he might have thought so; yet somehow, even though everything Hagrid had told him so far was unbelievable, Harry couldn't help trusting him.**

"That may get you killed some day, Harry; blindly trusting in people," George said seriously.

"I always trust people, unless they give me a reason not to or if I get a gut feeling about them," Harry shrugged.

"**This is it," said Hagrid, coming to a halt, "the Leaky Cauldron. It's a famous place."**

**It was a tiny, grubby-looking pub. If Hagrid hadn't pointed it out, Harry wouldn't have noticed it was there. The people hurrying by didn't glance at it. Their eyes slid from the big book shop on one side to the record shop on the other as if they couldn't see the Leaky Cauldron at all. In fact, Harry had the most peculiar feeling that only he and Hagrid could see it. Before he could mention this, Hagrid had steered him inside.**

**For a famous place, it was very dark and shabby. A few old women were sitting in a corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry. One of them was smoking a long pipe. A little man in a top hat was talking to the old bartender, who was quite bald and looked like a toothless walnut.**

"I'm curious... how would a walnut _with _teeth look like then?" Ginny speculated.

"What do you mean?" asked Dennis.

"Well it says a 'toothless walnut'; walnuts don't have teeth in the first place so..." She trailed off leaving a thought in everyone's mind.

**The low buzz of chatter stopped when they walked in. Everyone seemed to know Hagrid; they waved and smiled at him, and the bartender reached for a glass, saying, "The usual, Hagrid?"**

**"Can't, Tom, I'm on Hogwarts business," said Hagrid, clapping his great hand on Harry's shoulder and making Harry's knees buckle.**

**"Good Lord," said the bartender, peering at Harry, "is this - can this be -?"**

**The Leaky Cauldron had suddenly gone completely still and silent.**

"For the first and last time most likely," said Lauren.

**"Bless my soul," whispered the old bartender, "Harry Potter... what an honour."**

**He hurried out from behind the bar, rushed toward Harry and seized his hand, tears in his eyes.**

**"Welcome back, Mr Potter, welcome back."**

**Harry didn't know what to say. Everyone was looking at him. The old woman with the pipe was puffing on it without realizing it had gone out. Hagrid was beaming.**

"Thanks, Hagrid, thanks a whole lot. You think you could have gotten me out of there sooner? To tell you the truth, I think Hagrid liked the fact that he was doing something really important, not that he doesn't do important stuff, but this was kinda like … I don't know… bragging, I guess," Harry said with a sigh.

**Then there was a great scraping of chairs and the next moment, Harry found himself shaking hands with everyone in the Leaky Cauldron.**

**"Doris Crockford, Mr Potter, can't believe I'm meeting you at last."**

**"So proud, Mr Potter, I'm just so proud."**

**"Always wanted to shake your hand - I'm all of a flutter."**

**"Delighted, Mr Potter, just can't tell you, Diggle's the name, Dedalus Diggle."**

**"I've seen you before!" said Harry, as Dedalus Diggle's top hat fell off in his excitement. "You bowed to me once in a shop."**

**"He remembers!" cried Dedalus Diggle, looking around at everyone. "Did you hear that? He remembers me!" **

**Harry shook hands again and again - Doris Crockford kept coming back for more.**

**A pale young man made his way forward, very nervously. One of his eyes was twitching.**

"Beware of the twitching eye! Nothing good will come out of it!" Fred and George yelled.

**"Professor Quirrell!" said Hagrid. "Harry, Professor Quirrell will be one of your teachers at Hogwarts."**

**"P-P-Potter," stammered Professor Quirrell, grasping Harry's hand, "c-can't t-tell you how p- pleased I am to meet you."**

"That stuttering was _so_ annoying. I could never really understand what he was saying," said Alicia.

There was a lot of agreeing with her from the younger years that had him.

**"What sort of magic do you teach, Professor Quirrell?"**

**"D-Defence Against the D-D-Dark Arts," muttered Professor Quirrell, as though he'd rather not think about it. "N-not that you n-need it, eh, P-P-Potter?" He laughed nervously. "You'll be g-getting all your equipment, I suppose? I've g-got to p-pick up a new b-book on vampires, m-myself." He looked terrified at the very thought.**

**But the others wouldn't let Professor Quirrell keep Harry to himself. It took almost ten minutes to get away from them all. At last, Hagrid managed to make himself heard over the babble.**

**"Must get on - lots ter buy. Come on, Harry."**

**Doris Crockford shook Harry's hand one last time, and Hagrid led them through the bar and out into a small, walled courtyard, where there was nothing but a trash can and a few weeds.**

"Looks can be deceiving," Fred said wisely.

**Hagrid grinned at Harry.**

**"Told yeh, didn't I? Told yeh you was famous. Even Professor Quirrell was tremblin' ter meet yeh - mind you, he's usually tremblin'."**

**"Is he always that nervous?"**

**"Oh, yeah. Poor bloke. Brilliant mind. He was fine while he was** **studyin' outta books but then he took a year off ter get some firsthand experience... They say he met vampires in the Black Forest,**

"No, something worst then Vampires," Harry muttered.

**and there was a nasty bit o' trouble with a hag - never been the same since. Scared of the students, scared of his own subject now, where's me umbrella?"**

**Vampires? Hags? Harry's head was swimming. Hagrid, meanwhile, was counting bricks in the wall above the trash can.**

**"Three up... two across," he muttered. "Right, stand back, Harry."**

**He tapped the wall three times with the point of his umbrella.**

**The brick he had touched quivered - it wriggled - in the middle, a small hole appeared - it grew wider and wider - a second later they were facing an archway large enough even for Hagrid, an archway onto a cobbled street that twisted and turned out of sight.**

**"Welcome," said Hagrid, "to Diagon Alley."**

**He grinned at Harry's amazement. They stepped through the archway. Harry looked quickly over his shoulder and saw the archway shrink instantly back into solid wall.**

**The sun shone brightly on a stack of cauldrons outside the nearest shop. Cauldrons - All Sizes - Copper, Brass, Pewter, Silver - Self-Stirring - Collapsible, said a sign hanging over them.**

**"Yeah, you'll be needin' one," said Hagrid, "but we gotta get yer money first."**

**Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, "Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad..."**

**A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium - Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. **

**"Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand - fastest ever -" **

**There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon...**

**"Gringotts," said Hagrid.**

**They had reached a snowy white building that towered over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, was -**

**"Yeah, that's a goblin," said Hagrid quietly as they walked up the white stone steps toward him. **

**The goblin was about a head shorter than Harry. He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, Harry noticed, very long fingers and feet. He bowed as they walked inside. Now they were facing a second pair of doors, silver this time, with words engraved upon them:**

_**Enter, stranger, but take heed**_

___**Of what awaits the sin of greed,**_

___**For those who take, but do not earn,**_

___**Must pay most dearly in their turn.**_

___**So if you seek beneath our floors**_

___**A treasure that was never yours,**_

___**Thief, you have been warned, beware**_

___**Of finding more than treasure there.**_

**"Like I said, yeh'd be mad ter try an' rob it," said Hagrid.**

"And like _I_ said, Harry will try to rob it any day," Ginny repeated.

"I _won't_ be trying to rob Gringotts!" Harry declare, getting annoyed.

**A pair of goblins bowed them through the silver doors and they were in a vast marble hall. About a hundred more goblins were sitting on high stools behind a long counter, scribbling in large ledgers, weighing coins in brass scales, examining precious stones through eyeglasses. There were too many doors to count leading off the hall, and yet more goblins were showing people in and out of these. Hagrid and Harry made for the counter.**

**"Morning," said Hagrid to a free goblin. "We've come ter take some money outta Mr Harry Potter's safe."**

**"You have his key, Sir?"**

**"Got it here somewhere," said Hagrid, and he started emptying his pockets onto the counter, scattering a handful of mouldy dog biscuits over the goblin's book of numbers. **

**The goblin wrinkled his nose. Harry watched the goblin on their right weighing a pile of rubies as big as glowing coals.**

**"Got it," said Hagrid at last, holding up a tiny golden key.**

"So how did Hagrid get your key?" Lee questioned.

"Don't know. Maybe Dumbledore had it for safe keeping," Harry answered with an uncaring shrug.

**The goblin looked at it closely.**

**"That seems to be in order."**

**"An' I've also got a letter here from Professor Dumbledore," said Hagrid importantly, throwing out his chest. "It's about the You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen."**

"Oh, so it is Hagrid's fault that we got into that, Harry?" asked Ron.

"Well, no, I'd say it was Dumbledore's fault," said Harry.

**The goblin read the letter carefully.**

**"Very well," he said, handing it back to Hagrid, "I will have Someone take you down to both vaults. Griphook!"**

**Griphook was yet another goblin. Once Hagrid had crammed all the dog biscuits back inside his pockets, he and Harry followed Griphook toward one of the doors leading off the hall.**

**"What's the You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen?" Harry asked.**

**"Can't tell yeh that," said Hagrid mysteriously. "Very secret. Hogwarts business. Dumbledore's trusted me. More'n my job's worth ter tell yeh that."**

"Then why say something like that in front of him? You _know _he is like a bloodhound with a clue," Hermione groaned.

"Gee, Hermione, thanks," Harry grumbled.

"Just stating a fact."

**Griphook held the door open for them. Harry, who had expected more marble, was surprised. They were in a narrow stone passageway lit with flaming torches. It sloped steeply downward and there were little railway tracks on the floor. Griphook whistled and a small cart came hurtling up the tracks toward them. They climbed in - Hagrid with some difficulty - and were off.**

**At first they just hurtled through a maze of twisting passages. Harry tried to remember, left, right, right, left, middle fork, right, left, but it was impossible. The rattling cart seemed to know its own way, because Griphook wasn't steering.**

**Harry's eyes stung as the cold air rushed past them, but he kept them wide open. Once, he thought he saw a burst of fire at the end of a passage and twisted around to see if it was a dragon, but too late - - they plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and floor.**

"**I never know," Harry called to Hagrid over the noise of the cart, "what's the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite?"**

**"Stalagmite's got an 'm' in it," said Hagrid. "An' don' ask me questions just now, I think I'm gonna be sick."**

**He did look very green, and when the cart stopped at last beside a small door in the passage wall, Hagrid got out and had to lean against the wall to stop his knees from trembling.**

**Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.**

**"All yours," smiled Hagrid.**

**All Harry's - it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn't have known about this or they'd have had it from him faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.**

**Hagrid helped Harry pile some of it into a bag.**

**"The gold ones are Galleons," he explained. "Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough. Right, that should be enough fer a couple o' terms, we'll keep the rest safe for yeh." He turned to Griphook. "Vault seven hundred and thirteen now, please, and can we go more slowly?"**

**"One speed only," said Griphook.**

**They were going even deeper now and gathering speed. The air became colder and colder as they hurtled round tight corners. They went rattling over an underground ravine, and Harry leaned over the side to try to see what was down at the dark bottom, but Hagrid groaned and pulled him back by the scruff of his neck.**

**Vault seven hundred and thirteen had no keyhole.**

"Oh, very high security," Fred said, his curiousity peaked. "What's in it? What's in it?"

**"Stand back," said Griphook importantly. He stroked the door gently with one of his long fingers and it simply melted away.**

**"If anyone but a Gringotts goblin tried that, they'd be sucked through the door and trapped in there," said Griphook.**

**"How often do you check to see if anyone's inside?" Harry asked.**

**"About once every ten years," said Griphook with a rather nasty grin.**

**Something really extraordinary had to be inside this top security vault, Harry was sure, and he leaned forward eagerly, expecting to see fabulous jewels at the very least - but at first he thought it was empty. Then he noticed a grubby little package wrapped up in brown paper lying on the floor.**

"That's it? What a disappointment," said George. He truly did sound disappointed, while others in the room looked disappointed.

**Hagrid picked it up and tucked it deep inside his coat. Harry longed to know what it was, but knew better than to ask.**

**"Come on, back in this infernal cart, and don't talk to me on the way back, it's best if I keep me mouth shut," said Hagrid.**

**One wild cart ride later they stood blinking in the sunlight outside Gringotts. Harry didn't know where to run first now that he had a bag full of money. He didn't have to know how many Galleons there were to a pound to know that he was holding more money than he'd had in his whole life - more money than even Dudley had ever had.**

**"Might as well get yer uniform," said Hagrid, nodding toward Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. "Listen, Harry, would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts." **

**He did still look a bit sick, so Harry entered Madam Malkin's shop alone, feeling nervous.**

**Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.**

"What colour is mauve?" asked Ginny.

"It is a light purple, a lilac-lavender colour," Harry answered.

"Um, should we be worried that you know that colour or not?" Lee laughed.

"I had to paint the guest bedroom that colour once and my aunt was telling me not to be calling it purple, but to call it by the proper name, mauve," Harry explained.

**"Hogwarts, dear?"**

"Nope, just thought I'd pop in and say hi. See how everything is going," Harry said, rolling his eyes.

**she said, when Harry started to speak. "Got the lot here - another young man being fitted up just now, in fact. "**

**In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face**

"Oh look, Malfoy!" Ron said sneering.

**was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to him) slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length.**

**"Hello," said the boy, "Hogwarts, too?"**

"No, The Salem Witches' Institute in Boston," Harry said sarcastically.

**"Yes," said Harry.**

**"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."**

**Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley.**

**"Have you got your own broom?" the boy went on.**

**"No," said Harry.**

**"Play Quidditch at all?"**

**"No," Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be.**

"Good thing Wood isn't here or we would never hear the end of it," Alicia whispered to Angelina.

**"I do - Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree.**

"I would not really say a crime, more like a blessing because you are awful at playing. so the other team always wins," Ginny said happily.

**Know what house you'll be in yet?"**

**"No," said Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute.**

**"Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been - imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" **

**"Mmm," said Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting.**

**"I say, look at that man!" said the boy suddenly, nodding toward the front window. **

**Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Harry and pointing at two large ice creams to show he couldn't come in.**

**"That's Hagrid," said Harry, pleased to know something the boy didn't. "He works at Hogwarts."**

**"Oh," said the boy, "I've heard of him. He's a sort of servant, isn't he?"**

"No, he is a gamekeeper; very different to a servant, you little maggot!" Angelina snapped.

**"He's the gamekeeper," said Harry. He was liking the boy less and less every second.**

"Us too, Harry, us too," George said.

**"Yes, exactly. I heard he's a sort of savage - lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed."**

"Well we think he's brilliant!" Hermione said coldly

**"I think he's brilliant," said Harry coldly.**

"You think like Harry, Hermione." Parvati commented.

"Well there are worst people to think like."

**"Do you?" said the boy, with a slight sneer. "Why is he with you? Where are your parents?"**

**"They're dead," said Harry shortly. He didn't feel much like going into the matter with this boy.**

**"Oh, sorry," said the other, not sounding sorry at all. "But they were our kind, weren't they?"**

**"They were a witch and wizard, if that's what you mean."**

**"I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? They're just not the same, they've never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What's your surname, anyway?"**

**But before Harry could answer, Madam Malkin said, "That's you done, my dear," and Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop talking to the boy, hopped down from the footstool.**

**"Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose," said the drawling boy.**

"Unfortunately," Ron grumbled.

**Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice cream Hagrid had bought him (chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts).**

**"What's up?" said Hagrid.**

**"Nothing," Harry lied. **

**They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Harry cheered up a bit when he found a bottle of ink that changed colour as you wrote. **

**When they had left the shop, he said, "Hagrid, what's Quidditch?"**

**"Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin' how little yeh know - not knowin' about Quidditch!"**

**"Don't make me feel worse," said Harry. He told Hagrid about the pate boy in Madam Malkin's.**

**"-and he said people from Muggle families shouldn't even be allowed in."**

"Well that's bull!" Ginny declared gruffly.

"You know, I wonder if Malfoy thinks half-bloods should not be allowed in either," Harry commented thoughtfully.

"I don't know, why?"

"Just wondering."

**"Yer not from a Muggle family. If he'd known who yeh were - he's grown up knowin' yer name if his parents are wizardin' folk. You saw what everyone in the Leaky Cauldron was like when they saw yeh. Anyway, what does he know about it, some o' the best I ever saw were the only ones with magic in 'em in a long line o' Muggles - look at yer mum! Look what she had fer a sister!"**

**"So what is Quidditch?"**

**"It's our sport. Wizard sport. It's like - like soccer in the Muggle world - everyone follows Quidditch - played up in the air on broomsticks and there's four balls - sorta hard ter explain the rules." "And what are Slytherin and Hufflepuff?"**

**"School houses. There's four. Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o' duffers, but -"**

**"I bet I'm in Hufflepuff" said Harry gloomily.**

"There would be nothing wrong with you being in Hufflepuff. We would still be friends," said Hermione.

"Yeah, it wouldn't matter what house you were put into. We would still be your friend, except, perhaps, if you got put into Slytherin," said Ron. "I'm kidding, Harry!" he added quickly as Harry's face paled.

**"Better Hufflepuff than Slytherin," said Hagrid darkly. "There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one."**

**"Vol-, sorry - You-Know-Who was at Hogwarts?"**

**"Years an' years ago," said Hagrid.**

**They bought Harry's school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all. Even Dudley, who never read anything, would have been wild to get his hands on some of these. Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue- Tying and Much, Much More) by Professor Vindictus Viridian.**

**"I was trying to find out how to curse Dudley."**

"Not a bad idea, Harry, but wait until you are seventeen, so you don't get in trouble," George said.

**"I'm not sayin' that's not a good idea, but yer not ter use magic in the Muggle world except in very special circumstances," said Hagrid. "An' anyway, yeh couldn' work any of them curses yet, yeh'll need a lot more study before yeh get ter that level."**

"That too," Fred said, "but that doesn't mean that two very handsome seventeen year old twins can't go and pay them a visit."

**Hagrid wouldn't let Harry buy a solid gold cauldron, either ("It says pewter on yer list"), but they got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. Then they visited the Apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and bright powders lined the walls; bundles of feathers, strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. While Hagrid asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for Harry, Harry himself examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery-black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop).**

**Outside the Apothecary, Hagrid checked Harry's list again.**

**"Just yer wand left - A yeah, an' I still haven't got yeh a birthday present."**

**Harry felt himself go red.**

**"You don't have to -"**

**"I know I don't have to. Tell yeh what, I'll get yer animal. Not a toad, toads went outta fashion years ago, yeh'd be laughed at**

"Hey!" Neville said indignantly.

**- an' I don' like cats, they make me sneeze. I'll get yer an owl. All the kids want owls, they're dead useful, carry yer mail an' everythin'."**

**Twenty minutes later, they left Eeylops Owl Emporium, which had been dark and full of rustling and flickering, jewel-bright eyes. Harry now carried a large cage that held a beautiful snowy owl, fast asleep with her head under her wing. He couldn't stop stammering his thanks, sounding just like Professor Quirrell.**

**"Don' mention it," said Hagrid gruffly. "Don' expect you've had a lotta presents from them Dursleys. Just Ollivander's left now - only place fer wands, Ollivander's, and yeh gotta have the best wand."**

**A magic wand... this was what Harry had been really looking forward to.**

**The last shop was narrow and shabby. Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivander's: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window.**

**A tinkling bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop as they stepped inside. It was a tiny place, empty except for a single, spindly chair that Hagrid sat on to wait. Harry felt strangely as though he had entered a very strict library; he swallowed a lot of new questions that had just occurred to him and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling. For some reason, the back of his neck prickled. The very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.**

**"Good afternoon," said a soft voice. Harry jumped. Hagrid must have jumped, too, because there was a loud crunching noise and he got quickly off the spindly chair.**

**An old man was standing before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop.**

**"Hello," said Harry awkwardly.**

**"Ah yes," said the man. "Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Harry Potter." It wasn't a question. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."**

**Mr Ollivander moved closer to Harry. Harry wished he would blink. Those silvery eyes were a bit creepy.**

**"Your father, on the other hand, favoured a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favoured it - it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course."**

**Mr Ollivander had come so close that he and Harry were almost nose to nose. Harry could see himself reflected in those misty eyes.**

**"And that's where..."**

**Mr Ollivander touched the lightning scar on Harry's forehead with a long, white finger.**

**"I'm sorry to say I sold the wand that did it," he said softly. "Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands... well, if I'd known what that wand was going out into the world to do..."**

"It's not his fault," Harry said. "He had no clue that was going to happen."

Ron and Hermione glanced at each other. If Harry would only take a leaf out of his own book and quit blaming himself for Cedric's death.

**He shook his head and then, to Harry's relief, spotted Hagrid.**

**"Rubeus! Rubeus Hagrid! How nice to see you again... Oak, sixteen inches, rather bendy, wasn't it?"**

"That's a big wand," Fred said, then snorted shortly joined by his twin and Lee.

"Have you noticed how the wand length depends on the witch or wizard?" Hermione said, rolling her eyes at Fred, George and Lee, who were now howling with laughter.

"How do you mean?" Harry asked.

"Well take You-Know-Who, for example. He's tall, right, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah, fairly tall, I guess."

"Okay, so he is tall, and his wand is thirteen and a half inches. Hagrid is a half-giant and his wand was sixteen inches."

**"It was, sir, yes," said Hagrid.**

**"Good wand, that one. But I suppose they snapped it in half when you got expelled?" said Mr Ollivander, suddenly stern.**

**"Er - yes, they did, yes," said Hagrid, shuffling his feet. "I've still got the pieces, though," he added brightly.**

**"But you don't use them?" said Mr Ollivander sharply.**

**"Oh, no, sir," said Hagrid quickly. Harry noticed he gripped his pink umbrella very tightly as he spoke.**

"Nope, not one bit!" Katie laughed.

**"Hmmm," said Mr Ollivander, giving Hagrid a piercing look. "Well, now - Mr Potter. Let me see." He pulled a long tape measure with silver markings out of his pocket. "Which is your **

**"Er - well, I'm right-handed," said Harry.**

"What would happen if you were ambidextrous?" Ginny questioned.

"I don't know. Maybe it would work well in both hands? I really don't know," Hermione replied, writing down the question.

**"Hold out your arm. That's it." He measured Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit and round his head. As he measured, he said, "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Mr Potter. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand."**

"Hmm, that's funny. Why were you able to cast Alohomora on the door to open it with my wand then?" Harry asked Hermione.

"Maybe it realised that I was a friend?" Hermione suggested.

**Harry suddenly realised that the tape measure, which was measuring between his nostrils,**

"Why does it do that?" Patricia questioned.

"So it can get a good guess as to how powerful your magic is going to be," Hermione answered.

**was doing this on its own. Mr Ollivander was flitting around the shelves, taking down boxes.**

**"That will do," he said, and the tape measure crumpled into a heap on the floor. "Right then, Mr Potter. Try this one. Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. Just take it and give it a wave."**

**Harry took the wand and (feeling foolish)**

"I did as well," Hermione admitted.

**waved it around a bit, but Mr Ollivander snatched it out of his hand almost at once.**

**"Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try -"**

**Harry tried - but he had hardly raised the wand when it, too, was snatched back by Mr Ollivander.**

**"No, no -here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on, try it out."**

**Harry tried. And tried. He had no idea what Mr Ollivander was waiting for. The pile of tried wands was mounting higher and higher on the spindly chair, but the more wands Mr Ollivander pulled from the shelves, the happier he seemed to become.**

**"Tricky customer, eh? Not to worry, we'll find the perfect match here somewhere - I wonder, now - - yes, why not - unusual combination - holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple."**

**Harry took the wand. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls. Hagrid whooped and clapped and Mr Ollivander cried, "Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh, very good. Well, well, well... how curious... how very curious... "**

**He put Harry's wand back into its box and wrapped it in brown paper, still muttering, "Curious... curious…"**

**"Sorry," said Harry, "but what's curious?"**

**Mr Ollivander fixed Harry with his pale stare.**

**"I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather - just one other. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother why, its brother gave you that scar."**

The whole room went quiet.

"Your wand is a brother of You-Know-Who's?" said Hermione, awestruck.

"Umm yeah," Harry mumbled.

"Well, ahh… well, it's just that… umm..." Hermione stuttered.

"He can't help it, just like we can't help being related to Ron. Lay off him! Jezz! It is not like he's going to become a killer just because his wand is the same as You-Know-Who's!" George said, coming to Harry's defence.

**Harry swallowed.**

**"Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember... I think we must expect great things from you, Mr Potter... After all, He- Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things - terrible, yes, but great."**

"Is he complementing him?" Ron said in disgust.

"No, I think he's complementing the magic behind it, not Voldemort himself," Hermione said.

**Harry shivered. He wasn't sure he liked Mr Ollivander too much. He paid seven gold Galleons for his wand, and Mr Ollivander bowed them from his shop.**

**The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky as Harry and Hagrid made their way back down Diagon Alley, back through the wall, back through the Leaky Cauldron, now empty. Harry didn't speak at all as they walked down the road; he didn't even notice how much people were gawking at them on the Underground, laden as they were with all their funny-shaped packages, with the snowy owl asleep in its cage on Harry's lap. Up another escalator, out into Paddington station; Harry only realized where they were when Hagrid tapped him on the shoulder.**

**"Got time fer a bite to eat before yer train leaves," he said.**

**He bought Harry a hamburger and they sat down on plastic seats to eat them. Harry kept looking around. Everything looked so strange, somehow.**

**"You alright, Harry? Yer very quiet," said Hagrid.**

**Harry wasn't sure he could explain. He'd just had the best birthday of his life - and yet - he chewed his hamburger, trying to find the words.**

**"Everyone thinks I'm special,"**

"Because you are, Harry, and not just because you defeated You-Know-Who. You're special because you don't back down from anything and you never give up. You're kind, modest, and loving even with all the stuff that the Dursleys put you through. You are someone most people try to be like," Ginny said.

Harry blushed at that and looked down, not really sure what to say to that. After a brief pause, Ron started reading again.

**he said at last. "All those people in the Leaky Cauldron, Professor Quirrell, Mr Ollivander... but I don't know anything about magic at all. How can they expect great things? I'm famous and I can't even remember what I'm famous for. I don't know what happened when Vol-, sorry - I mean, the night my parents died."**

**Hagrid leaned across the table. Behind the wild beard and eyebrows he wore a very kind smile.**

**"Don' you worry, Harry. You'll learn fast enough. Everyone starts at the beginning at Hogwarts, you'll be just fine. Just be yerself. I know it's hard. Yeh've been singled out, an' that's always hard. But yeh'll have a great time at Hogwarts - I did - still do, 'smatter of fact."**

**Hagrid helped Harry on to the train that would take him back to the Dursleys, then handed him an envelope.**

**"Yer ticket fer Hogwarts," he said. "First o' September - King's Cross - it's all on yer ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she'll know where to find me... See yeh soon, Harry."**

"He forgot to tell you how to get on the platform," said Dean.

"Oh it's alright, I found my way," Harry said, glancing at Ron.

**The train pulled out of the station. Harry wanted to watch Hagrid until he was out of sight; he rose in his seat and pressed his nose against the window, but he blinked and Hagrid had gone.**

"And that's the end of the chapter," Ron said, closing the book and putting it on the table.

"Can I read?" asked Neville.

"Go ahead," Ron said.

Neville took the book and opened it to the next chapter.


	9. the journey from platform 9 and 34

AN: Again I do not own Harry Potter. Thank you to the wonderful Azaelia Silmarwen for looking over this chapter for me. Also to the guest who reviewed. This takes place in Harrys 5th year. He did not rob Gringotts yet.

"**Chapter Six: The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters**," Neville read out.

"This is where you met us," Hermione said smiling.

"Yep," Harry said, popping the P.

**Harry's last month with the Dursleys wasn't fun. True, Dudley was now so** **scared of Harry**

"Come to think of it, I still think he is scared of me. I don't know why. I mean, it is not like I'd hex him or something like that," Harry muttered, rolling his eyes.

**he wouldn't stay in the same room, while Aunt Petunia** **and Uncle Vernon didn't shut Harry in his cupboard, force him to do** **anything, or shout at him - in fact, they didn't speak to him at all. Half terrified, half furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it were empty. Although this was an improvement in many ways, it did become a bit depressing after a while.**

**Harry kept to his room, with his new owl for company. He had decided to call her Hedwig, a name he had found in A History of Magic.**

"If I remember correctly Hedwig is also the German saint of orphans," said Hermione.

"I always liked Hedwig. She is such a gorgeous owl, Harry," said Katie.

"Thanks. I'll tell her you said that." Harry smiled.

**His school books were very interesting. He lay on his bed reading late into the night, Hedwig swooping in and out of the open window as she pleased. It** **was lucky that Aunt Petunia didn't come in to vacuum anymore, because** **Hedwig kept bringing back dead mice.**

"Yuck!" Lavender squealed, pulling a face.

"She's an owl; what do you expect?" Lee asked, rolling his eyes.

**Every night before he went to sleep, Harry ticked off another day on the piece of paper he had pinned to the wall, counting down to September the first.**

**On the last day of August he thought he'd better speak to his aunt and uncle about getting to King's Cross station the next day, so he went down to the living room where they were watching a quiz show on television. He cleared his throat to let them know he was there, and Dudley screamed and ran from the room.**

"Scaredy cat," Fred muttered.

**"Er - Uncle Vernon?" Uncle Vernon grunted to show he was listening.**

**"Er - I need to be at King's Cross tomorrow to - to go to Hogwarts."**

**Uncle Vernon grunted again.**

**"Would it be all right if you gave me a lift?"**

**Grunt. Harry supposed that meant yes.**

"I didn't know you spoke troll!" Neville said, looking at Harry.

Harry laughed.

"No, that's not toll. That's pig, but I think the two are interchangeable."

**"Thank you."**

**He was about to go back upstairs when Uncle Vernon actually spoke.**

**"Funny way to get to a wizards' school, the train. Magic carpets all got** **punctures, have they?" **

**Harry didn't say anything.**

**"Where is this school, anyway?"**

**"I don't know," said Harry, realising this for the first time. **

**He pulled** **the ticket Hagrid had given him out of his pocket.**

**"I just take the train from platform nine and three-quarters at eleven** **o'clock," he read. **

**His aunt and uncle stared.**

**"Platform what?"**

**"Nine and three-quarters."**

**"Don't talk rubbish," said Uncle Vernon. "There is no platform nine and** **three-quarters."**

**"It's on my ticket."**

**"Barking," said Uncle Vernon, "howling mad, the lot of them. You'll see.** **You just wait. All right, we'll take you to King's Cross. We're going up** **to London tomorrow anyway, or I wouldn't bother."**

**"Why are you going to London?" Harry asked, trying to keep things** **friendly.**

**"Taking Dudley to the hospital," growled Uncle Vernon. "Got to have that** **ruddy tail removed before he goes to Smeltings."**

"Aww, why? It is a part of him now. He looks much better with it," George whined.

**Harry woke at five o'clock**

"To tell truth I was up at four-thirty, after spending half the night awake worrying," Harry admitted.

"About what?" Ginny asked.

"Different things. I was mostly worried that it was still a dream or some joke the Dursleys were pulling on me."

"Harry," Dean said looking at him "I think we have established that the Dursleys have no imagination."

**the next morning and was too excited and nervous to go back to sleep. He got up and pulled on his jeans because he didn't want to walk into the station in his wizard's robes - he'd change on the train.**

"Good thinking." Katie nodded approvingly.

**He checked his Hogwarts list yet again to make sure he had everything he needed, saw that Hedwig was shut safely in her cage, and then paced the room, waiting for the Dursleys to get up. Two hours later, Harry's huge, heavy trunk had been loaded into the Dursleys' car, Aunt Petunia had talked**

"More like bribed," Harry said.

**Dudley into sitting next to Harry, and they had set off. They reached King's Cross at half past ten. Uncle Vernon dumped Harry's trunk onto a cart and wheeled it into the station for him. Harry thought this was strangely kind until Uncle Vernon stopped dead, facing the platforms with a nasty grin on his face.**

**"Well, there you are, boy. Platform nine - platform ten. Your platform** **should be somewhere in the middle, but they don't seem to have built it** **yet, do they?"**

**He was quite right, of course. There was a big plastic number nine over** **one platform and a big plastic number ten over the one next to it, and** **in the middle, nothing at all.**

**"Have a good term,"**

"Oh don't worry, I did," Harry said smiling. "Well up until the end of the school year, at least."

**said Uncle Vernon with an even nastier smile. He** **left without another word. Harry turned and saw the Dursleys drive away.** **All three of them were laughing. Harry's mouth went rather dry. What on** **earth was he going to do? He was starting to attract a lot of funny** **looks, because of Hedwig. He'd have to ask someone.**

"Harry, asking for help? Who would have thought of it?" Hermione said, shaking her head.

"What? I'm used to doing stuff on my own. There was never really anyone to turn to when I was growing up to ask for help," Harry explained.

"Well now you have us, if you need help, and I'm sure Lupin would help. Padfoot would in a heartbeat, I know," said Ginny.

"I'll try to remember that," Harry muttered, looking down.

**He stopped a passing guard, but didn't dare mention platform nine and** **three-quarters. The guard had never heard of Hogwarts and when Harry** **couldn't even tell him what part of the country it was in, he started to** **get annoyed, as though Harry was being stupid on purpose.**

"That's really not a bad guess... I think that a lot too," Hermione said, giving Harry a light shove.

Harry rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her.

**Getting desperate, Harry asked for the train that left at eleven o'clock, but** **the guard said there wasn't one. In the end the guard strode away,** **muttering about time wasters. Harry was now trying hard not to panic.** **According to the large clock over the arrivals board, he had ten minutes** **left to get on the train to Hogwarts and he had no idea how to do it; he** **was stranded in the middle of a station with a trunk he could hardly** **lift, a pocket full of wizard money, and a large owl.**

**Hagrid must have forgotten to tell him something you had to do, like** **tapping the third brick on the left to get into Diagon Alley. He** **wondered if he should get out his wand and start tapping the ticket** **inspector's stand between platforms nine and ten.**

"That would be interesting; you should totally do it," said Seamus.

**At that moment a group of people passed just behind him and he caught a** **few words of what they were saying.**

**"- packed with Muggles, of course -"**

**Harry swung round. The speaker was a plump woman who was talking to four** **boys, all with flaming red hair.**

"Woo Hoo," Fred and George whooped as Ginny smiled, before frowning as she remembered what she acted like.

**Each of them was pushing a trunk like Harry's in front of him - and they had an owl.**

**Heart hammering, Harry pushed his cart after them. They stopped and so** **did he, just near enough to hear what they were saying.**

**"Now, what's the platform number?" said the boys' mother.**

**"Nine and three-quarters!" piped a small girl, also red-headed, who was** **holding her hand, "Mum, can't I go... "**

"Aww, little Gin Gin wants to go with her big brothers!" Fred teased.

"'Course I did, you nit. You four were leaving me with Mum and I was going to be lonely."

**"You're not old enough, Ginny, now be quiet. Alright, Percy, you go** **first."**

**What looked like the oldest boy marched toward platforms nine and ten.**

**Harry watched, careful not to blink in case he missed it - but just as** **the boy reached the dividing barrier between the two platforms, a large** **crowd of tourists came swarming in front of him and by the time the last** **backpack had cleared away, the boy had vanished.**

**"Fred, you next," the plump woman said.**

**"I'm not Fred, I'm George," said the boy. "Honestly, woman, you call** **yourself our mother? Can't you tell I'm George?"**

**"Sorry, George, dear."**

**"Only joking, I am Fred," said the boy, and off he went.**

"How come I have a feeling that it was George who said that?" Angelina said, looking over at the twins as if trying to see who was who.

"It wasn't, it was Fred!" George said, holding up his hands "Honest, it was."

**His twin called after him to hurry up, and he must have done so, because a second later,** **he had gone - but how had he done it?**

"Magic, Harry, magic," said Fred.

**Now the third brother was walking briskly toward the barrier he was** **almost there - and then, quite suddenly, he wasn't anywhere.** **There was nothing else for it.**

**"Excuse me," Harry said to the plump woman.**

**"Hello, dear," she said. "First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too."**

**She pointed at the last and youngest of her sons. He was tall, thin, and** **gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose.**

Most of the room snorted at that and Ron frowned.

"Oh come on, Harry! I don't have big feet or hands!"

"You grew into them!" Harry said laughing.

"And I call you my best friend."

**"Yes," said Harry. "The thing is - the thing is, I don't know how to** **-"**

**"How to get onto the platform?" she said kindly, and Harry nodded.**

**"Not to worry," she said. "All you have to do is walk straight at the** **barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don't stop and don't be scared** **you'll crash into it, that's very important. Best do it at a bit of a** **run if you're nervous. Go on, go now before Ron."**

**"Er - okay," said Harry.**

**He pushed his trolley around and stared at the barrier. It looked very** **solid.**

"It is, hurts like hell to ram into too," Harry announced, rubbing his shoulder as he remembered a past memory.

"Second year," Ron explained to the baffled faces around him.

**He started to walk toward it. People jostled him on their way to** **platforms nine and ten. Harry walked more quickly. He was going to smash** **right into that barrier and then he'd be in trouble**

"Why? You could just say that you lost control of the trolley," Collin stated.

**- leaning forward on his cart, he broke into a heavy run - the barrier was coming nearer and nearer - he wouldn't be able to stop - the cart was out of control** **- he was a foot away - he closed his eyes ready for the crash -** **It didn't come... he kept on running... he opened his eyes. **

**A scarlet** **steam engine was waiting next to a platform packed with people. A sign** **overhead said Hogwarts Express, eleven o'clock. Harry looked behind him** **and saw a wrought-iron archway where the barrier had been, with the** **words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it. He had done it.**

"Yeah! You did it!" George whooped.

**Smoke from the engine drifted over the heads of the chattering crowd,** **while cats of every colour wound here and there between their legs. Owls hooted to one another in a disgruntled sort of way over the babble and the scraping of heavy trunks.**

**The first few carriages were already packed with students, some hanging out of the window to talk to their families, some fighting over seats. Harry pushed his cart off down the platform in search of an empty seat.**

**He passed a round-faced boy who was saying, "Gran, I've lost my toad again."**

**"Oh, Neville," he heard the old woman sigh.**

**A boy with dreadlocks was surrounded by a small crowd.**

**"Give us a look, Lee, go on."**

**The boy lifted the lid of a box in his arms, and the people around him** **shrieked and yelled as something inside poked out a long, hairy leg.**

"What happened to her anyway, Lee?" asked Dean, interested at what happened.

"Umm, I accidently killed her," Harry admitted sheepishly.

"Why?"

"Well Ron was freaking out, so I took my transfiguration book and smashed her... I bought Lee another one, though," he said quickly.

"Yeah, I named him Harry," Lee said with a snigger.

"Explains why you would get down on your hands and knees and call for Harry like a dog!" Ron said laughing.

**Harry pressed on through the crowd until he found an empty compartment** **near the end of the train. He put Hedwig inside first and then started** **to shove and heave his trunk toward the train door. He tried to lift it** **up the steps but could hardly raise one end and twice he dropped it** **painfully on his foot.**

**"Want a hand?" It was one of the red-haired twins he'd followed through** **the barrier.**

**"Yes, please," Harry panted.**

**"Oy, Fred! C'mere and help!"**

"It was George, not Fred, who came to help," Harry said.

"How can you tell us apart when even Mum can't?" George asked.

"I really haven't the faintest idea; I just can," Harry shrugged.

**With the twins' help, Harry's trunk was at last tucked away in a corner** **of the compartment.**

**"Thanks," said Harry, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes.**

**"What's that?" said one of the twins suddenly, pointing at Harry's** **lightning scar.**

**"Blimey," said the other twin. "Are you?'**

**"He is," said the first twin. "Aren't you?" he added to Harry.**

**"What?" said Harry.**

**"Harry Potter, "chorused the twins.**

**"Oh, him,"**

"Oh him?" said Ginny, laughing.

"Better then Boy," Harry said shrugging.

**said Harry. "I mean, yes, I am."**

**The two boys gawked at him, and Harry felt himself turning red. Then, to** **his relief, a voice came floating in through the train's open door.**

**"Fred? George? Are you there?"**

**"Coming, Mum."**

**With a last look at Harry, the twins hopped off the train.**

**Harry sat down next to the window where, half hidden, he could watch the** **red-haired family on the platform and hear what they were saying.**

"Jezz, Harry, if you wanted to listen to our conversation you could have come out on to the platform. I'm sure Ginny would have of loved – ow!" Ron said as Ginny socked him right in the arm.

**Their mother had just taken out her handkerchief.**

**"Ron, you've got something on your nose."**

**The youngest boy tried to jerk out of the way, but she grabbed him and** **began rubbing the end of his nose.**

**"Mum – geroff!" He wriggled free.**

**"Aaah, has ickle Ronnie got somefink on his nosie?" said one of the** **twins.**

**"Shut up," said Ron.**

**"Where's Percy?" said their mother.**

**"He's coming now."**

**The oldest boy came striding into sight. He had already changed into his** **billowing black Hogwarts robes, and Harry noticed a shiny silver badge** **on his chest with the letter P on it.**

**"Can't stay long, Mother," he said. "I'm up front; the prefects have got** **two compartments to themselves -"**

"Goody for you," Ginny said bitterly.

**"Oh, are you a prefect, Percy?" said one of the twins, with an air of** **great surprise. "You should have said something, we had no idea."**

**"Hang on, I think I remember him saying something about it," said the** **other twin. "Once -"**

**"Or twice -"**

**"A minute -"**

**"All summer -"**

**"Oh, shut up," said Percy the Prefect.**

"More like Percy the Prat," George commented.

**"How come Percy gets new robes, anyway?" said one of the twins.**

**"Because he's a prefect," said their mother fondly. "Alright, dear, well, have a good term - send me an owl when you get there."**

**She kissed Percy on the cheek and he left. Then she turned to the twins.**

**"Now, you two - this year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl** **telling me you've - you've blown up a toilet or -"**

**"Blown up a toilet? We've never blown up a toilet."**

**"Great idea though, thanks, Mum."**

"Did you two really blow up a loo?" Lauren asked with concern.

"Nah, not yet. We just thought we'd get mum worried," Fred said smiling.

"But what about the toilet seat you tried to send to me at the end of the year when I was in the hospital wing?" Harry questioned.

"Oh yeah, we did," George said, smiling at the memory.

**"It's not funny. And look after Ron."**

**"Don't worry, ickle Ronniekins is safe with us."**

Ron snorted.

"I'm safer with 'Mr-I-don't-want-you-guys-hurt,-but-I'll-go-and-tr y-to-get-myself-killed-time-and-time-again-to-make -sure-everyone-is-safe' over here than with you two, some days."

Harry looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"What?"

"'Mr-I-don't-want-you-guys-hurt,-but-I'll-go-and-t ry-to-get-myself-killed-time-and-time-again-to-mak e-sure-everyone-is-safe'?" Harry questioned.

"Fits you, don't it?" Ron said with a shrug.

**"Shut up," said Ron again. **

**He was almost as tall as the twins already** **and his nose was still pink where his mother had rubbed it.**

**"Hey, Mom, guess what? Guess who we just met on the train?"**

**Harry leaned back quickly so they couldn't see him looking.**

"I saw you anyway, which is why I brought it up," Fred said.

**"You know that black-haired boy who was near us in the station? Know who** **he is?"**

**"Who?"**

**"Harry Potter!"**

**Harry heard the little girl's voice.**

**"Oh, Mum, can I go on the train and see him, Mum, oh please..."**

"More like 'Oh Mum, can't I go on the train to hide away and sneak off to Hogwarts, please?'" Ron said, looking at his little sister.

**"You've already seen him, Ginny, and the poor boy isn't something you goggle at in a zoo. Is he really, Fred? How do you know?"**

**"Asked him. Saw his scar. It's really there - like lightning."**

**"Poor dear - no wonder he was alone, I wondered. He was ever so polite** **when he asked how to get onto the platform."**

**"Never mind that, do you think he remembers what You-Know-Who looks** **like?"**

"Like a snake," Harry said automatically.

**Their mother suddenly became very stern.**

**"I forbid you to ask him, Fred. No, don't you dare. As though he needs** **reminding of that on his first day at school."**

**"Alright, keep your hair on."**

**A whistle sounded.**

**"Hurry up!" their mother said, and the three boys clambered onto the** **train. They leaned out of the window for her to kiss them good-bye, and** **their younger sister began to cry.**

**"Don't, Ginny, we'll send you loads of owls."**

**"We'll send you a Hogwarts toilet seat."**

"I never got that by the way," Ginny said.

**"George!"**

**"Only joking, Mum."**

**The train began to move. Harry saw the boys' mother waving and their sister, half laughing, half crying, running to keep up with the train until it gathered too much speed, then she fell back and waved.**

**Harry watched the girl and her mother disappear as the train rounded the corner. Houses flashed past the window. Harry felt a great leap of excitement. He didn't know what he was going to but it had to be better** **than what he was leaving behind.**

"Anywhere would be better than that Hellhole," Anthony, a third year, said.

**The door of the compartment slid open and the youngest redheaded boy** **came in.**

**"Anyone sitting there?" he asked, pointing at the seat opposite Harry.** **"Everywhere else is full."**

"Was not. I know for a fact that there was an empty compartment right next door," Neville said.

**Harry shook his head and the boy sat down. He glanced at Harry and then** **looked quickly out of the window, pretending he hadn't looked. Harry saw** **he still had a black mark on his nose.**

**"Hey, Ron."**

**The twins were back.**

**"Listen, we're going down the middle of the train - Lee Jordan's got a giant tarantula down there."**

**"Right," mumbled Ron.**

**"Harry," said the other twin, "did we introduce ourselves? Fred and George Weasley. And this is Ron, our brother. See you later, then."**

**"Bye," said Harry and Ron. The twins slid the compartment door shut behind them.**

**"Are you really Harry Potter?" Ron blurted out.**

**Harry nodded.**

**"Oh -well, I thought it might be one of Fred and George's jokes," said Ron. "And have you really got - you know..."**

**He pointed at Harry's forehead.**

**Harry pulled back his bangs to show the lightning scar. Ron stared.**

**"So that's where You-Know-Who**

**"Yes," said Harry, "but I can't remember it."**

**"Nothing?" said Ron eagerly.**

**"Well - I remember a lot of green light, but nothing else."**

"Know more now," Harry sighed.

**"Wow," said Ron. He sat and stared at Harry for a few moments, then, as** **though he had suddenly realised what he was doing, he looked quickly out of the window again.**

**"Are all your family wizards?" asked Harry, who found Ron just as** **interesting as Ron found him.**

**"Er - Yes, I think so," said Ron. "I think Mum's got a second cousin who's an accountant, but we never talk about him."**

"Why not?" Natalie asked.

"He is just mad that we are wizards and he barely got enough magic to get into Hogwarts," Ginny explained.

"So he has magic?"

"Yeah, but not a lot," said George.

**"So you must know loads of magic already."**

**The Weasleys were clearly one of those old wizarding families the pale boy in Diagon Alley had talked about.**

"Well... we are old, yes, but Malfoy was talking about rich old families," George said.

"I kinda figured that, but you lot are nicer," Harry said smiling.

**"I heard you went to live with Muggles," said Ron. "What are they like?"**

**"Horrible -well, not all of them. My aunt and uncle and cousin are,** **though.**

"Glad you don't clump all Muggles together," Hermione said.

**Wish I'd had three wizard brothers."**

**"Five," said Ron. For some reason, he was looking gloomy. "I'm the sixth** **in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I've got a lot to live up** **to. Bill and Charlie have already left - Bill was head boy and Charlie** **was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy's a prefect. Fred and George mess** **around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks** **they're really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others,** **but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first. You never get** **anything new, either, with five brothers. I've got Bill's old robes,** **Charlie's old wand, and Percy's old rat."**

"So, you saved Ginny. No one in our family had done that before," Fred said, looking at Ron.

**Ron reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fat grey rat, which was** **asleep.**

**"His name's Scabbers and he's useless, he hardly ever wakes up. Percy** **got an owl from my dad for being made a prefect, but they couldn't aff** **- I mean, I got Scabbers instead."**

**Ron's ears went pink. He seemed to think he'd said too much, because he** **went back to staring out of the window.**

**Harry didn't think there was anything wrong with not being able to** **afford an owl. After all, he'd never had any money in his life until a month ago, and he told Ron so, all about having to wear Dudley's old clothes and never getting proper birthday presents. This seemed to cheer Ron up.**

"Ron!" Hermione said, glaring at him.

"Hey! Harry didn't tell me it was that bad, Hermione. All he said was that he got his cousins old clothing and he did not get many presents."

**"... and until Hagrid told me, I didn't know anything about being a wizard or about my parents or Voldemort"**

**Ron gasped.**

**"What?" said Harry.**

**"You said You-Know-Who's name!" said Ron, sounding both shocked and** **impressed. "I'd have thought you, of all people -"**

**"I'm not trying to be brave or anything, saying the name," said Harry, "I** **just never knew you shouldn't. See what I mean? I've got loads to** **learn... I bet," he added, voicing for the first time something that** **had been worrying him a lot lately, "I bet I'm the worst in the class."**

"You're not; you are average," said a seventh year, "but at Defence you are the best; even better than I am and I'm the best in my Defence class."

"T-thanks," Harry mumbled, blushing.

**"You won't be. There's loads of people who come from Muggle families and** **they learn quick enough."**

"Like Hermione," Dean said, looking at the bushy haired girl with a smile.

**While they had been talking, the train had carried them out of London.** **Now they were speeding past fields full of cows and sheep. They were** **quiet for a time, watching the fields and lanes flick past.**

**Around half past twelve there was a great clattering outside in the** **corridor and a smiling, dimpled woman slid back their door and said,** **"Anything off the cart, dears?"**

**Harry, who hadn't had any breakfast, leapt to his feet, but Ron's ears** **went pink again and he muttered that he'd brought sandwiches. Harry went** **out into the corridor.**

**He had never had any money for candy with the Dursleys, and now that he** **had pockets rattling with gold and silver he was ready to buy as many** **Mars Bars as he could carry - but the woman didn't have Mars Bars. What** **she did have were Bettie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, Drooble's Best** **Blowing Gum, Chocolate Frogs. Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes, Liquorice** **Wands, and a number of other strange things Harry had never seen in his** **life.**

"Why don't they put on sandwiches or fruit or something healthy instead of candy?' Hermione grumbled. 'It's supposed to be lunch, not a snack."

**Not wanting to miss anything, he got some of everything and paid** **the woman eleven silver Sickles and seven bronze Knuts.** **Ron stared as Harry brought it all back in to the compartment and tipped** **it onto an empty seat.**

**"Hungry, are you?"**

**"Starving," said Harry, taking a large bite out of a pumpkin pasty.**

**Ron had taken out a lumpy package and unwrapped it. There were four** **sandwiches inside. He pulled one of them apart and said, "She always** **forgets I don't like corned beef."**

"I like corn beef," said Ginny.

"Ham for me," said Katie.

"Peanut butter and jelly," Fed and George said at the same time.

"Gjetost and apple," Hermione said mildly.

"What on earth is gjetost?" Harry asked, looking at her.

"Norwegian cheese made out of goat milk," Hermione explained.

"Sounds interesting," Harry said.

**"Swap you for one of these," said Harry, holding up a pasty. "Go on -"**

**"You don't want this, it's all dry," said Ron. "She hasn't got much** **time," he added quickly, "you know, with five of us."**

**"Go on, have a pasty," said Harry, who had never had anything to share** **before or, indeed, anyone to share it with. It was a nice feeling,** **sitting there with Ron, eating their way through all Harry's pasties,** **cakes, and candies (the sandwiches lay forgotten).**

**"What are these?" Harry asked Ron, holding up a pack of Chocolate Frogs.** **"They're not really frogs, are they?"**

"Why on earth would we want to eat real frogs?" Ginny asked, looking at Harry.

"Umm," Harry said.

"Moving on," George said.

**He was starting to feel that nothing would surprise him.**

**"No," said Ron. "But see what the card is. I'm missing Agrippa."**

"I got him now. Harry gave me the card as a Christmas gift," Ron exclaimed happily.

**"What?"**

**"Oh, of course, you wouldn't know - Chocolate Frogs have cards, inside** **them, you know, to collect - famous witches and wizards. I've got about** **five hundred, but I haven't got Agrippa or Ptolemy."**

**Harry unwrapped his Chocolate Frog and picked up the card. It showed a** **man's face. He wore half- moon glasses, had a long, crooked nose, and** **flowing silver hair, beard, and moustache.**

"Dumbledore!" Dennis said happily

**Underneath the picture was the name Albus Dumbledore.**

**"So this is Dumbledore!" said Harry.**

**"Don't tell me you'd never heard of Dumbledore!" said Ron. "Can I have a** **frog? I might get Agrippa – thanks."**

**Harry turned over his card and read:**

_**ALBUS DUMBLEDORE**_

_**CURRENTLY HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS**_

_**Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is**_

_**particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in**_

_**1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his**_

_**work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore**_

_**enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling.**_

**Harry turned the card back over and saw, to his astonishment, that Dumbledore's face had disappeared.**

**"He's gone!"**

**"Well, you can't expect him to hang around all day," said Ron. "He'll be back. No, I've got Morgana again and I've got about six of her... do you want it? You can start collecting."**

**Ron's eyes strayed to the pile of Chocolate Frogs waiting to be unwrapped.**

**"Help yourself," said Harry. "But in, you know, the Muggle world, people just stay put in photos."**

**"Do they? What, they don't move at all?" Ron sounded amazed. "Weird!"**

**Harry stared as Dumbledore sidled back into the picture on his card and gave him a small smile. Ron was more interested in eating the frogs than looking at the Famous Witches and Wizards cards, but Harry couldn't keep his eyes off them. Soon he had not only Dumbledore and Morgana, but Hengist of Woodcroft, Alberic Grunnion, Circe, Paracelsus, and Merlin.**

**He finally tore his eyes away from the druidess Cliodna, who was scratching her nose, to open a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans.**

**"You want to be careful with those," Ron warned Harry. "When they say every flavour, they mean every flavour - you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a booger flavoured one once."**

"I did. It was gross!" George said, making a face.

**Ron picked up a green bean, looked at it carefully, and bit into a** **corner.**

**"Bleaaargh - see? Sprouts."**

"I kinda like sprouts," Angelina said, earning her a few weird looks.

**They had a good time eating the Every Flavour Beans. Harry got toast,** **coconut, baked bean, strawberry, curry, grass, coffee, sardine,**

"Not bad for a first try," Fred commented.

**and was even brave enough to nibble the end of a funny grey one Ron wouldn't** **touch, which turned out to be pepper.**

**The countryside now flying past the window was becoming wilder. The neat** **fields had gone. Now there were woods, twisting rivers, and dark green** **hills.**

**There was a knock on the door of their compartment and the round-faced** **boy Harry had passed on platform nine and three-quarters came in. He** **looked tearful.**

**"Sorry," he said, "but have you seen a toad at all?"**

**When they shook their heads, he wailed, "I've lost him! He keeps getting away from me!"**

**"He'll turn up," said Harry.**

**"Yes," said the boy miserably. "Well, if you see him..."**

**He left.**

**"Don't know why he's so bothered," said Ron. "If I'd brought a toad I'd** **lose it as quick as I could.**

"Sorry Neville," Ron said, looking at him.

Neville waved off the apology.

**Mind you, I brought Scabbers, so I can't talk."**

**The rat was still snoozing on Ron's lap.**

**"He might have died and you wouldn't know the difference,"**

"Wish he did," said Ron in disgust**.**

**"I tried to turn him yellow yesterday to make him more** **interesting, but the spell didn't work. I'll show you, look..."**

**He rummaged around in his trunk and pulled out a very battered-looking** **wand. It was chipped in places and something white was glinting at the end.**

**"Unicorn hair's nearly poking out. Anyway"**

**He had just raised his wand when the compartment door slid open again.** **The toadless boy was back, but this time he had a girl with him. She was** **already wearing her new Hogwarts robes.**

**"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," she said. She had a bossy** **sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.**

"See; you description is worse than mine!" Ron said.

Hermione did not answer; she was too busy beating Harry up with a pillow.

**"We've already told him we haven't seen it," said Ron, but the girl** **wasn't listening, she was looking at the wand in his hand.**

**"Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it, then."**

**She sat down. Ron looked taken aback.**

**"Er - alright."**

**He cleared his throat.**

**"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, Turn this stupid, fat rat yellow."**

**He waved his wand, but nothing happened. Scabbers stayed grey and fast asleep.**

**"Are you sure that's a real spell?" said the girl. "Well, it's not very good, is it? I've tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard - I've learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough - I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you."**

**She said all this very fast.**

"I should say so," Neville said, panting a little at the end.

**Harry looked at Ron, and was relieved to see by his stunned face that he hadn't learned all the course books by heart either.**

"I don't think any kid has learned the course books by heart until 'Mione came along," Ron commented.

"Percy might have," Ginny argued.

**"I'm Ron Weasley," Ron muttered.**

**"Harry Potter," said Harry.**

**"Are you really?" said Hermione. "I know all about you, of course – I** **got a few extra books, for background reading, and you're in **_**Modern Magical History**_** and **_**The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts**_** and **_**Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century**_**."**

**"Am I?" said Harry, feeling dazed.**

**"Goodness, didn't you know, I'd have found out everything I could if it was me," said Hermione. "Do either of you know what house you'll be in? I've been asking around, and I hope I'm in Gryffindor, it sounds by far** **the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it, but I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn't be too bad... Anyway, we'd better go and look for Neville's toad. You two had better change, you know, I expect we'll be there** **soon."**

**And she left, taking the toadless boy with her.**

**"Whatever house I'm in, I hope she's not in it," said Ron.**

"Sorry, sorry!" Ron said as Hermione hit him in the arm.

**He threw his wand back into his trunk. **

**"Stupid spell - George gave it to me, bet he** **knew it was a dud."**

"I did," George said.

**"What house are your brothers in?" asked Harry.**

**"Gryffindor," said Ron. Gloom seemed to be settling on him again. "Mum** **and Dad were in it, too. I don't know what they'll say if I'm not. I don't suppose Ravenclaw would be too bad, but imagine if they put me in** **Slytherin."**

**"That's the house Vol-, I mean, You-Know-Who was in?"**

**"Yeah," said Ron. He flopped back into his seat, looking depressed.**

**"You know, I think the ends of Scabbers' whiskers are a bit lighter,"** **said Harry, trying to take Ron's mind off houses. "So what do your** **oldest brothers do now that they've left, anyway?"**

**Harry was wondering what a wizard did once he'd finished school.**

**"Charlie's in Romania studying dragons, and Bill's in Africa doing** **something for Gringotts," said Ron. "Did you hear about Gringotts? It's been all over the Daily Prophet, but I don't suppose you get that with the Muggles**

"Now I do. Before I had to nick Uncle Vernon's daily newspaper after he was done with it," Harry informed everyone.

**- someone tried to rob a high security vault."**

**Harry stared.**

**"Really? What happened to them?"**

**"Nothing, that's why it's such big news. They haven't been caught. My dad says it must've been a powerful Dark wizard to get round Gringotts, but they don't think they took anything, that's what's odd. 'Course,** **everyone gets scared when something like this happens in case You-Know-Who's behind it."**

"He was," Harry said darkly.

**Harry turned this news over in his mind. He was starting to get a** **prickle of fear every time You- Know-Who was mentioned. He supposed this** **was all part of entering the magical world, but it had been a lot more** **comfortable saying "Voldemort" without worrying.**

**"What's your Quidditch team?" Ron asked.**

**"Er - I don't know any," Harry confessed.**

**"What!" Ron looked dumbfounded. "Oh, you wait, it's the best game in the** **world -" **

**And he was off, explaining all about the four balls and the positions of the seven players, describing famous games he'd been to with his brothers and the broomstick he'd like to get if he had the money. He was just taking Harry through the finer points of the game when the compartment door slid open yet again, but it wasn't Neville the toadless boy, or Hermione Granger this time.**

**Three boys entered, and Harry recognised the middle one at once: it was the pale boy from Madam Malkin's robe shop. He was looking at Harry with a lot more interest than he'd shown back in Diagon Alley.**

**"Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"**

"No, it's not me. My name is James Evans," Harry said sarcastically.

"James Evans?" Hermione asked seriously.

"James in my middle name and Evans was Mum's maiden name."

"Oh! We can call you Jamsie!" the twins shouted.

Harry groaned and put his head into his hands.

"Call me Jamsie and you will regret it!" he grumbled.

**"Yes," said Harry. He was looking at the other boys. **

**Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards.**

**"Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle," said the pale boy carelessly,** **noticing where Harry was looking. "And my name's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."**

**Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger. Draco** **Malfoy looked at him.**

**"Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father** **told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than** **they can afford."** **He turned back to Harry. "You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."**

"Oh yeah, you can help me alright; by letting me see why you are the wrong sort," Harry said coldly.

**He held out his hand to shake Harry's, but Harry didn't take it.**

**"I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks," he said** **coolly.**

**Draco Malfoy didn't go red, but a pink tinged appeared in his pale cheeks.**

"Wow, you embarrassed him!" said Colin. "I didn't think anyone could embarrass him!"

**"I'd be careful if I were you, Potter," he said slowly. "Unless you're a** **bit politer you'll go the same way as your parents. They didn't know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riffraff like the** **Weasleys and that Hagrid, and it'll rub off on you."**

**Both Harry and Ron stood up.**

**"Say that again," Ron said, his face as red as his hair.**

**"Oh, you're going to fight us, are you?" Malfoy sneered.**

"More like try to intimidate," Rom mumbled.

"I bet that worked out great, right?" Katie said, trying not to laugh.

"No, not really, but now Harry can intimidate him a little bit," Ron said proudly.

**"Unless you get out now," said Harry, more bravely than he felt, because** **Crabbe and Goyle were a lot bigger than him or Ron.**

**"But we don't feel like leaving, do we, boys? We've eaten all our food** **and you still seem to have some."**

**Goyle reached toward the Chocolate Frogs next to Ron - Ron leapt** **forward, but before he'd so much as touched him, Goyle let out a** **horrible yell.**

**Scabbers the rat was hanging off his finger, sharp little teeth sunk** **deep into Goyle's knuckle - Crabbe and Malfoy backed away as Goyle swung** **Scabbers round and round, howling, and when Scabbers finally flew off** **and hit the window, all three of them disappeared at once. Perhaps they** **thought there were more rats lurking among the sweets, or perhaps they'd** **heard footsteps, because a second later, Hermione Granger had come in.**

**"What has been going on?" she said, looking at the sweets all over the** **floor and Ron picking up Scabbers by his tail.**

"**I think he's been knocked out," Ron said to Harry. He looked closer at** **Scabbers. "No - I don't believe it - he's gone back to sleep-"**

"He what?" Ginny asked, trying not to laugh.

"He hit a window and fell back to sleep," Ron said.

"You sure you were not mistaken?"

**And so he had.**

**"You've met Malfoy before?"**

**Harry explained about their meeting in Diagon Alley.**

**"I've heard of his family," said Ron darkly. "They were some of the** **first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says Malfoy's father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side." He turned to Hermione. "Can we help you with something?"**

**"You'd better hurry up and put your robes on, I've just been up to the** **front to ask the conductor, and he says we're nearly there. You haven't** **been fighting, have you? You'll be in trouble before we even get there!"**

**"Scabbers has been fighting, not us," said Ron, scowling at her. "Would** **you mind leaving while we change?"**

**"Alright - I only came in here because people outside are behaving very childishly, racing up and down the corridors," said Hermione in a sniffy voice. "And you've got dirt on your nose, by the way, did you know?"**

**Ron glared at her as she left. Harry peered out of the window. It was getting dark. He could see mountains and forests under a deep purple sky. The train did seem to be slowing down.**

**He and Ron took off their jackets and pulled on their long black robes. Ron's were a bit short for him, you could see his sneakers underneath them.**

**A voice echoed through the train: "We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes' time. Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately."**

**Harry's stomach lurched with nerves and Ron, he saw, looked pale under his freckles. They crammed their pockets with the last of the sweets and joined the crowd thronging the corridor.**

**The train slowed right down and finally stopped. People pushed their way toward the door and out on to a tiny, dark platform. Harry shivered in the cold night air. Then a lamp came bobbing over the heads of the** **students, and Harry heard a familiar voice: "Firs' years! Firs' years** **over here! Alright there, Harry?"**

**Hagrid's big hairy face beamed over the sea of heads.**

**"C'mon, follow me - any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs'** **years follow me!"**

**Slipping and stumbling, they followed Hagrid down what seemed to be a** **steep, narrow path. It was so dark on either side of them that Harry** **thought there must be thick trees there. Nobody spoke much. Neville, the** **boy who kept losing his toad, sniffed once or twice.**

**"Ye' all get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec," Hagrid called over** **his shoulder, "jus' round this bend here."**

**There was a loud "Oooooh!"**

"I love Hogwarts at night," said Natalie, sighing.

**The narrow path had opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black lake.** **Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in** **the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers.**

**"No more'n four to a boat!" Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little** **boats sitting in the water by the shore. Harry and Ron were followed into** **their boat by Neville and Hermione. **

**"Everyone in?" shouted Hagrid, who had a boat to himself. "Right then - FORWARD!"**

**And the fleet of little boats moved off all at once, gliding across the** **lake, which was as smooth as glass. Everyone was silent, staring up at** **the great castle overhead. It towered over them as they sailed nearer** **and nearer to the cliff on which it stood.**

**"Heads down!" yelled Hagrid as the first boats reached the cliff; they** **all bent their heads and the little boats carried them through a curtain** **of ivy that hid a wide opening in the cliff face. **

**They were carried** **along a dark tunnel, which seemed to be taking them right underneath the** **castle, until they reached a kind of underground harbor, where they** **clambered out onto rocks and pebbles.**

**"Oy, you there! Is this your toad?" said Hagrid, who was checking the** **boats as people climbed out of them.**

**"Trevor!" cried Neville blissfully, holding out his hands. **

**Then they** **clambered up a passageway in the rock after Hagrid's lamp, coming out at** **last onto smooth, damp grass right in the shadow of the castle.** **They walked up a flight of stone steps and crowded around the huge, Oak front door.**

**"Everyone here? You there, still got yer toad?"**

**Hagrid raised a gigantic fist and knocked three times on the castle door.**

"My turn, again, I guess," Harry said as he took the book before anyone else could grab it.

"Hey, I want to read it!" Parvati said, looking at Harry.

Harry glanced at the title.

"Fine, but please don't judge me after this chapter."

"Okay… why?" Ron asked slowly.

"You'll see."


	10. The Sorting hat

**(I do not own Harry Potter JK Rowling dose thank you to Azaelia Silmarwen for looking this over. Also I replaced the first chapter with a new one so if you want to go back and read it you can.) **

**Chapter Seven: The Sorting Hat**," Parvati began to read out.

**The door swung open at once. A tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes stood there. She had a very stern face and Harry's first thought was that this was not someone to cross.**

"Yet we do it all the time," Harry commented.

**"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," said Hagrid.**

**"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here."**

**She pulled the door wide. The entrance hall was so big you could have fit the whole of the Dursleys' house in it.**

"Now that would be funny to see," Ginny sniggered.

**The stone walls were lit with flaming torches like the ones at Gringotts, the ceiling was too high to make out, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them led to the upper floors.**

**They followed Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. Harry could hear the drone of hundreds of voices from a doorway to the right -the rest of the school must already be here - but Professor McGonagall showed the first years into a small, empty chamber off the hall. They crowded in, standing rather closer together than they would usually have done, peering about nervously.**

**"Welcome to Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family**

"Or it _is _your family," Ginny said smiling.

**within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room.**

**"The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rule breaking will lose house points.**

"Or win you house points," Ron said, looking at Harry and Hermione.

**At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honour. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.** **The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the** **rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as** **you can while you are waiting."**

"How were we supposed to do that?" wondered aloud.

**Her eyes lingered for a moment on Neville's cloak, which was fastened** **under his left ear, and on Ron's smudged nose. Harry nervously tried to** **flatten his hair.**

"Harry, when will you learn that _nothing _will flatten your hair?" Hermione questioned with a laugh.

"It is a nervous habit of mine," Harry said dismissingly.

**"I shall return when we are ready for you," said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly."**

"They all waited quietly, I'm sure," Katie said with a sceptical snort.

**She left the chamber. Harry swallowed.**

**"How exactly do they sort us into houses?" he asked Ron.**

**"Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking."**

"Really Ron! Of course he was! You really need to stop falling for their jokes," said Ginny, shaking her head.

"Hey! Quit picking on me! Like you were any better when George was telling you that you needed to get past a sphinx!" Ron shot back.

"Well we _did _fight a toll in first year," Harry whispered to Hermione.

"True. Maybe the Weasley twins' joking is more than joking?" Hermione replied thoughtfully.

**Harry's heart gave a horrible jolt. A test? In front of the whole** **school? But he didn't know any magic yet - what on earth would he have** **to do? He hadn't expected something like this the moment they arrived.**

**He looked around anxiously and saw that everyone else looked terrified,** **too. No one was talking much except Hermione Granger, who was whispering** **very fast about all the spells she'd learned and wondering which one** **she'd need. Harry tried hard not to listen to her. He'd never been more** **nervous, never, not even when he'd had to take a school report home to** **the Dursleys saying that he'd somehow turned his teacher's wig blue.**

"Really? How did you manage to do that?" Kennith questioned curiously as amusement played in his eyes.

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "All I can remember was her scolding me because Dudley lied, yet again, about me copying his homework when it was the other way around. Mrs Lee told me to go the corner and I had to stay inside from recess. Anyway, I got a note home from her and I thought that was no fair, so I accidently turned her wig blue."

"Can you see McGonagall with blue hair?" Fred asked with a goofy grin on his face.

**He kept his eyes fixed on the door. Any second now, Professor McGonagall** **would come back and lead him to his doom.**

"Don't dramatize," Hermione scolded. "You always do that."

"Well I'd rather be realistic then overly optimistic," Harry informed her.

"Regardless, sometimes you are realistic to the point of depression."

"Sorry."

**Then something happened that made him jump about a foot in the air -** **several people behind him screamed.**

"Run; its Harry Potters fan girls!" Ron screamed dramatically.

Harry looked at him.

"What? It's true!"

"You are weird," Harry commented.

"If I'm weird then what are you for hanging out with me?" Ron asked, trying not to laugh.

"Slightly insane."

"I don't think slightly is the right word. Sometimes you are completely insane!" Ron said laughing.

Harry stuck his tongue out at him.

**"What the -?"**

**He gasped. So did the people around him. About twenty ghosts had just** **streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent,** **they glided across the room talking to one another and hardly glancing** **at the first years. They seemed to be arguing. **

**What looked like a fat** **little monk was saying: "Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him** **a second chance -"**

"Ah… the Peeves argument" said George.

"They have it every year, see," Fred continued.

"Arguing about whether or not he should be allowed back into the school."

"And in the end they always let him stay."

"Also it helps them introduce themselves to the first years," they both finished up.

**"My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost – I say, what are you all doing here?"**

**A ghost wearing a ruff and tights had suddenly noticed the first years.**

"Nick!"

**Nobody answered.**

**"New students!" said the Fat Friar, smiling around at them. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?"**

"No, really, I had no idea!" Harry said sarcastically.

Ron snorted.

"Technically you didn't have an idea."

"Shut up!" Harry snapped. "And I did to have an idea! McGonagall just said that we were to be sorted momentarily."

**A few people nodded mutely.**

**"Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!" said the Friar. "My old house, you know."**

**"Move along now," said a sharp voice. "The Sorting Ceremony's about to start."**

**Professor McGonagall had returned. One by one, the ghosts floated away through the opposite wall.**

**"Now, form a line," Professor McGonagall told the first years, "and follow me."**

**Feeling oddly as though his legs had turned to lead, Harry got into line behind a boy with sandy hair, with Ron behind him, and they walked out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the Great Hall.**

**Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in mid-air over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. These tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting.**

**Professor McGonagall led the first years up here, so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver. Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars.**

"I love the ceiling at night," Parvati said with a smile.

"So do I. It can be very pretty," Hermione agreed.

**He heard Hermione whisper, "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in **_**Hogwarts, A History**_**."**

"Of course you did," said Ron. "I think that is your favourite book."

**It was hard to believe there was a ceiling there at all, and that the Great Hall didn't simply open on to the heavens.**

"You really have a way with words, Harry," Angelina commented.

**Harry quickly looked down again as Professor McGonagall silently placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard's hat. This hat was patched and frayed and extremely dirty. Aunt Petunia wouldn't have let it in the house.**

**Maybe they had to try and get a rabbit out of it, Harry thought wildly, that seemed the sort of thing - noticing that everyone in the hall was now staring at the hat, he stared at it, too. For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Then the hat twitched. A rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth - and the hat began to sing:**

_**"Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,**_

_**But don't judge on what you see,**_

_**I'll eat myself if you can find**_

_**A smarter hat than me.**_

"Challenge accepted," Harry said happily, rubbing his hands together.

Ron and Hermione looked at each other than at Harry. Worriedly they shrugged.

_**You can keep your bowlers black,**_  
_**Your top hats sleek and tall,**_  
_**For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat**_  
_**And I can cap them all.**_

_**There's nothing hidden in your head**_

_**The Sorting Hat can't see,**_

_**So try me on and I will tell you**_

_**Where you ought to be.**_

_**You might belong in Gryffindor,**_

_**Where dwell the brave at heart,**_

_**Their daring, nerve, and chivalry Set Gryffindors apart;**_

_**You might belong in Hufflepuff,**_  
_**Where they are just and loyal,**_

_**Those patient Hufflepuffis are true  
And unafraid of toil;**_

_**Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,**_

_**if you've a ready mind,**_

_**Where those of wit and learning,**_

_**Will always find their kind;**_

_**Or perhaps in Slytherin**_

_**You'll make your real friends,**_

_**Those cunning folk use any means**_

_**To achieve their ends.**_

_**So put me on! Don't be afraid!**_

_**And don't get in a flap!**_

_**You're in safe hands (though I have none)**_

_**For I'm a Thinking Cap!"**_

**The whole hall burst into applause as the hat finished its song. It bowed to each of the four tables and then became quite still again.**

**"So we've just got to try on the hat!" Ron whispered to Harry. "I'll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll."**

"Like I said before, seer blood," Hermione said.

**Harry smiled weakly. Yes, trying on the hat was a lot better than** **having to do a spell, but he did wish they could have tried it on** **without everyone watching. The hat seemed to be asking rather a lot;** **Harry didn't feel brave or quick-witted or any of it at the moment. If** **only the hat had mentioned a house for people who felt a bit queasy,** **that would have been the one for him.**

"That is the house everybody would be in," Lorean commented.

**Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment.**

**"When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," she said. "Abbott, Hannah!"**

**A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes, and sat down. A moment's pause –**

**"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat.**

**The table on the right cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down at the Hufflepuff table. Harry saw the ghost of the Fat Friar waving merrily at her.**

**"Bones, Susan!"**

**"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.**

**"Boot, Terry!"**

**"RAVENCLAW!"**

**The table second from the left clapped this time; several Ravenclaws stood up to shake hands with Terry as he joined them.**

**"Brocklehurst, Mandy" went to Ravenclaw too, but "Brown, Lavender" became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with cheers; Harry could see Ron's twin brothers catcalling.**

Lavender glared at Fred and George, who just grinned.

**"Bulstrode, Millicent" then became a Slytherin. **

**Perhaps it was Harry's imagination, after all he'd heard about Slytherin, but he thought they looked like an unpleasant lot. He was starting to feel definitely sick now. He remembered being picked for teams during gym at his old school. He had always been last to be chosen, not because he was no good, but because no one wanted Dudley to think they liked him.**

**"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"**

**"HUFFLEPUFF!"**

**Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the house at once, but at others it took a little while to decide. "Finnigan, Seamus," the sandy-haired boy next to Harry in the line, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.**

**"Granger, Hermione!"**

**Hermione almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat eagerly on her head.**

**"GRYFFINDOR!" shouted the hat. **

**Ron groaned.**

**A horrible thought struck Harry, as horrible thoughts always do when you're very nervous. What if he wasn't chosen at all? What if he just sat there with the hat over his eyes for ages, until Professor McGonagall jerked it off his head and said there had obviously been a mistake and he'd better get back on the train?**

"That would not happen. Your name gets put down when you are born, so there would be no mistake," said Alicia.

**When Neville Longbottom, the boy who kept losing his toad, was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouted, "GRYFFINDOR," Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to "MacDougal, Morag."**

**Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once: the hat had barely touched his head when it screamed, "SLYTHERIN!"**

**Malfoy went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking pleased with himself.**

**There weren't many people left now. "Moon" "Nott" "Parkinson" then a pair of twin girls, "Patil" and "Patil" then "Perks, Sally-Anne"**

"What ever happened to Sally-Anne?" Harry suddenly asked.

"I don't know. She just disappeared right after first year," Ron answered.

**and then, at last - "Potter, Harry!"**

"As I stated before this chapter, please do not judge me," Harry repeated.

"Why not?" Hermione enquired.

"Just don't judge me, please."

**As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall.**

**"Potter, did she say?"**

**"The Harry Potter?"**

**The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited.**

"**Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see.**

"That is Gryffindor," said Ron

**Not a bad mind either.**

"That's Ravenclaw," Ginny] informed everyone.

**There's talent,**

"Hufflepuff," Dean commented.

**my goodness, yes - and a nice thirst to prove yourself,**

"Slytherin," George stated.

**now that's interesting... So where shall I put you?"**

**Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, **_**Not Slytherin, not**__**Slytherin.**_

**"Not Slytherin, eh?" said the small voice. "Are you sure? You could be** **great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you** **on the way to greatness, no doubt about that - no? Well, if you're sure better be Gryffindor."**

The whole common room was quiet. Harry had his head bowed hiding his face.

"You could have been in any of the houses?" Ron said.

"Yeah, but I'm sure you guys all could have too. I mean no one has the quality of just one house. The hat picks out the trait that you show the most."

"Well, the Hat wanted to put me into Hufflepuff," Katie admitted.

"Ravenclaw with my sister," Parvati said. "And moving on." Clearing her throat she continued.

**Harry heard the hat shout the last word to the whole hall. He took off** **relieved to have been chosen and not put in Slytherin, he hardly noticed** **that he was getting the loudest cheer yet. Percy the Prefect got up and** **shook his hand vigorously, while the Weasley twins yelled, "We got** **Potter! We got Potter!" Harry sat down opposite the ghost in the ruff** **he'd seen earlier. The ghost patted his arm, giving Harry the sudden,** **horrible feeling he'd just plunged it into a bucket of ice-cold water.**

"Better than walking through them," Ron shivered. He had walked through three different ghosts on his first month at Hogwarts and it was not at all fun.

**He could see the High Table properly now. At the end nearest him sat Hagrid, who caught his eye and gave him the thumbs up. Harry grinned back. And there, in the centre of the High Table, in a large gold chair, sat Albus Dumbledore. Harry recognized him at once from the card he'd gotten out of the Chocolate Frog on the train. Dumbledore's silver hair was the only thing in the whole hall that shone as brightly as the ghosts. Harry spotted Professor Quirrell, too, the nervous young man from the Leaky Cauldron. He was looking very peculiar in a large purple turban.**

"Why _did _he where that thing?" Katie asked.

"I don't know," Alicia said "We never asked."

"I did. He told me that he got it from an African prince," Dean explained. "Not too sure I believe him though."

**And now there were only three people left to be sorted. "Thomas, Dean," a Black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table. "Turpin, Lisa," became a Ravenclaw and then it was Ron's turn. He was pale green by now. Harry crossed his fingers under the table and a second later the hat had shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!"**

**Harry clapped loudly with the rest as Ron collapsed into the chair next to him.**

**"Well done, Ron, excellent," said Percy Weasley, pompously across Harry,**

"Kiss up," Ginny muttered.

**as "Zabini, Blaise," was made a Slytherin. Professor McGonagall rolled** **up her scroll and took the Sorting Hat away.**

**Harry looked down at his empty gold plate. He had only just realised how hungry he was. The pumpkin pasties seemed ages ago.** **Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.**

Harry sighed. He was starting to get another headache and he had a feeling that he was going to be having visions again.

**"Welcome," he said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"**

**He sat back down. Everybody clapped and cheered. Harry didn't know whether to laugh or not.**

**"Is he - a bit mad?" he asked Percy uncertainly.**

"Yes, yes he is," Fed and George said in unison.

**"Mad?" said Percy airily. "He's a genius! Best wizard in the world!**

"That is a matter of opinion," said Harry. "Some people may think he is the best while others will not."

**But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?"**

**Harry's mouth fell open. The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs.**

**The Dursleys had never exactly starved Harry,**

"What is your definition of starved, just wondering?" Ginny asked.

**but he'd never been allowed to eat as much as he liked. Dudley had always taken anything that Harry really wanted, even if It made him sick. Harry piled his plate with a bit of everything except the peppermints and began to eat. It was all delicious.**

**"That does look good," said the ghost in the ruff sadly, watching Harry cut up his steak.**

**"Can't you -?"**

"**I haven't eaten for nearly four hundred years,"**

"I don't think you would need to eat if you are a ghost," Hermione said, puzzlement evident in her voice.

**said the ghost. "I don't need to, of course, but one does miss it. I don't think I've introduced myself? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington at your service. Resident ghost of Gryffindor Tower."**

**"I know who you are!" said Ron suddenly. "My brothers told me about you - you're Nearly Headless Nick!"**

**"I would prefer you to call me Sir Nicholas de Mimsy -"**

"I would rather call him Sir Nicholas or just Nick. Much easier than that long title he has," Loren commented.

**the ghost began stiffly, but sandy-haired Seamus Finnigan interrupted.**

**"Nearly Headless? How can you be nearly headless?"**

**Sir Nicholas looked extremely miffed, as if their little chat wasn't going at all the way he wanted.**

**"Like this," he said irritably. **

**He seized his left ear and pulled. His whole head swung off his neck and fell onto his shoulder as if it was on a hinge. Someone had obviously tried to behead him, but not done it properly. **

**Looking pleased at the stunned looks on their faces, Nearly Headless Nick flipped his head back onto his neck, coughed, and said, "So - new Gryffindors! I hope you're going to help us win the house championship this year? Gryffindors have never gone so long without winning. Slytherins have got the cup six years in a row! The Bloody Baron's becoming almost unbearable - he's the Slytherin ghost."**

**Harry looked over at the Slytherin table and saw a horrible ghost sitting there, with blank staring eyes, a gaunt face, and robes stained with silver blood. He was right next to Malfoy who, Harry was pleased to see, didn't look too pleased with the seating arrangements.**

"Why? The baron won't hurt you. He'll just haunt you if you ask him how he died," said Fred.

**"How did he get covered in blood?" asked Seamus with great interest.**

**"I've never asked," said Nearly Headless Nick delicately.**

**When everyone had eaten as much as they could, the remains of the food faded from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before. A moment later the desserts appeared. Blocks of ice cream in every flavour you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate éclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pudding.**

**As Harry helped himself to a treacle tart,**

"Jezz Harry! I swear one of these days you will turn into a treacle tin or bottle," Hermione said, looking fondly at her friend as she shook her head. Harry just smiled.

**the talk turned to their families.**

**"I'm half-and-half," said Seamus. "Me dad's a Muggle. Mum didn't tell him she was a witch 'til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him."**

"That could have been bad, though. What if he was mad that he had been tricked? He could have taken his anger out on you and your mum," said Katie.

"I never thought of that before. I guess I'm lucky then," Seamus said.

**The others laughed.**

**"What about you, Neville?" said Ron.**

**"Well, my gran brought me up and she's a witch," said Neville, "but the family thought I was all- Muggle for ages. My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me – he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned**

"Isn't he a lovely uncle? Sorry, Neville, but..." Ginny broke off

"It's alright. He was a little bit weird; I think he was worried that I was going to be a squib."

"Still that's not nice."

**- but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced - all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy.**

"More than likely out of relief that you weren't hurt, than not being a Squib," Ginny grumbled.

**And you should have seen their faces when I got in here - they thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see. Great Uncle Algie was so pleased he bought me my toad."**

**On Harry's other side, Percy Weasley and Hermione were talking about lessons ("I do hope they start right away, there's so much to learn, I'm particularly interested in Transfiguration, you know, turning something into something else, of course, it's supposed to be very difficult-"; "You'll be starting small, just matches into needles and that sort of thing - ").**

**Harry, who was starting to feel warm and sleepy, looked up at the High Table again. Hagrid was drinking deeply from his goblet.** **Professor McGonagall was talking to Professor Dumbledore. Professor Quirrell, in his absurd turban, was talking to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin.**

**It happened very suddenly. The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell's turban straight into Harry's eyes**

"That is kinda creepy," Lavender commented.

**- and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry's forehead.**

**"Ouch!" Harry clapped a hand to his head.**

**"What is it?" asked Percy.**

**"N-nothing."**

**The pain had gone as quickly as it had come. Harder to shake off was the** **feeling Harry had gotten from the teacher's look - a feeling that he** **didn't like Harry at all.**

**"Who's that teacher talking to Professor Quirrell?" he asked Percy.**

**"Oh, you know Quirrell already, do you? No wonder he's looking so** **nervous, that's Professor Snape. He teaches Potions, but he doesn't want** **to - everyone knows he's after Quirrell's job. Knows an awful lot about** **the Dark Arts, Snape."**

**Harry watched Snape for a while, but Snape didn't look at him again.** **At last, the desserts too disappeared, and Professor Dumbledore got to** **his feet again. The hall fell silent.**

**"Ahern - just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I** **have a few start-of-term notices to give you.** **First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to** **all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember** **that as well."**

**Dumbledore's twinkling eyes flashed in the direction of the Weasley** **twins.**

**"I have also been asked by Mr Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all** **that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.** **Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone** **interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch.** **And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor** **on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to** **die a very painful death."**

**Harry laughed, but he was one of the few who did.**

**"He's not serious?" he muttered to Percy.**

**"Must be," said Percy, frowning at Dumbledore. "It's odd, because he** **usually gives us a reason why we're not allowed to go somewhere – the** **forest's full of dangerous beasts, everyone knows that. I do think he** **might have told us prefects, at least."**

"Why? What makes prefects like you so special, you little brown nosier!" Ginny snapped.

**"And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" cried Dumbledore. Harry noticed that the other teachers' smiles had become rather fixed.**

**Dumbledore gave his wand a little flick, as if he was trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose high above the tables and twisted itself, snakelike, into words.**

**"Everyone pick their favourite tune," said Dumbledore, "and off we go!"**

**And the school bellowed:**

"Sing it, Parvati!" George ordered.

"Fine." She started singing to the tune of_ Danny Boy_

_**"Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,**_

_**Teach us something please,**_

_**Whether we be old and bald**_

_**Or young with scabby knees,**_

_**Our heads could do with filling**_

_**With some interesting stuff,**_

_**For now they're bare and full of air,**_

_**Dead flies and bits of fluff,**_

_**So teach us things worth knowing,**_

_**Bring back what we've forgot,**_

_**just do your best, we'll do the rest,**_

_**And learn until our brains all rot.**_

"Very nice," said George, clapping

"George and I did it to the tune of _'Don't worry be happy'_ the year before," Fred said smiling.

**Everybody finished the song at different times. At last, only the Weasley twins were left singing along to a very slow funeral march. Dumbledore conducted their last few lines with his wand and when they had finished, he was one of those who clapped loudest.**

**"Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!** **And now, bedtime. Off you trot!"**

**The Gryffindor first years followed Percy through the chattering crowds,** **out of the Great Hall, and up the marble staircase. Harry's legs were** **like lead again, but only because he was so tired and full of food. He** **was too sleepy even to be surprised that the people in the portraits** **along the corridors whispered and pointed as they passed, or that twice** **Percy led them through doorways hidden behind sliding panels and hanging** **tapestries. They climbed more staircases, yawning and dragging their** **feet, and Harry was just wondering how much farther they had to go when** **they came to a sudden halt.**

**A bundle of walking sticks was floating in mid-air ahead of them, and as** **Percy took a step toward them they started throwing themselves at him.**

**"Peeves," Percy whispered to the first years. "A poltergeist." He raised** **his voice, "Peeves - show yourself"**

**A loud, rude sound, like the air being let out of a balloon, answered.**

**"Do you want me to go to the Bloody Baron?"**

"You don't pull out the Baron card the first night!" Harry announced. "You save it for when you really need it."

**There was a pop, and a little man with wicked, dark eyes and a wide mouth appeared, floating cross- legged in the air, clutching the walking sticks.**

**"Oooooooh!" he said, with an evil cackle. "Ickle Firsties! What fun!"**

**He swooped suddenly at them. They all ducked.**

**"Go away, Peeves, or the Baron'll hear about this, I mean it!" barked** **Percy.**

**Peeves stuck out his tongue and vanished, dropping the walking sticks on** **Neville's head. They heard him zooming away, rattling coats of armour as** **he passed.**

**"You want to watch out for Peeves," said Percy, as they set off again.** **"The Bloody Baron's the only one who can control him, he won't even** **listen to us prefects. Here we are."**

**At the very end of the corridor hung a portrait of a very fat woman in a** **pink silk dress.**

**"Password?" she said. "Caput Draconis,"**

"Head of the Dragon," Hermione translated.

**said Percy, and the portrait swung forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. **

**They all scrambled through it - Neville needed a leg up - and found themselves in the Gryffindor common room, a cosy, round room full of squashy armchairs. **

**Percy directed the girls through one door to their dormitory and the boys through another. At the top of a spiral staircase - they were obviously in one of the towers - they found their beds at last: five four-posters hung with deep red, velvet curtains. Their trunks had already been brought up. Too tired to talk much, they pulled on their pyjamas and fell into bed.**

**"Great food, isn't it?" Ron muttered to Harry through the hangings.** **"Get off, Scabbers! He's chewing my sheets."**

**Harry was going to ask Ron if he'd had any of the treacle tart, but he** **fell asleep almost at once.**

**Perhaps Harry had eaten a bit too much, because he had a very strange** **dream. He was wearing Professor Quirrell's turban, which kept talking to** **him, telling him he must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it was** **his destiny. Harry told the turban he didn't want to be in Slytherin; it** **got heavier and heavier; he tried to pull it off but it tightened** **painfully - and there was Malfoy, laughing at him as he struggled with** **it -then Malfoy turned into the hook-nosed teacher, Snape, whose laugh** **became high and cold - there was a burst of green light**

"Okay, that is a weird dream," Lavender declared.

"Nah, I have had weirder," Harry disagreed.

**and Harry woke, sweating and shaking.**

**He rolled over and fell asleep again, and when he woke next day, he didn't remember the dream at all.**

"That is the last chapter," Parvati informed the room.

"My turn then," Harry said, grabbing the book and opening it to chapter eight.


	11. The Potions Master

**(I do not own Harry Potter. Thank you to ****Azaelia Silmarwen for looking this chapter over.) **

Harry grabbed the book and opened it to the right chapter. He then read the title to himself and groaned.

"What?" asked Hermione, concerned.

"**The Potions Master**," Harry read, which explained everything.

"Aww great; we get to read about our favourite professor," George said sarcastically.

"Yeah… to infuriate," Fred sniggered.

"I thought that was Filch?" Ron questioned

"He is number two," said George. 'Besides, he isn't even a teacher.'

"**There, look."**

**"Where?"**

**"Next to the tall kid with the red hair."**

**"Wearing the glasses?"**

**"Did you see his face?"**

**"Did you see his scar?"**

"Way to treat him like a side show freak!" Katie snapped.

**Whispers followed Harry from the moment he left his dormitory the next day. People lining up outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at him, or doubled back to pass him in the corridors again, staring.**

"Okay, that would get annoying," said Ginny.

"Not to mention confusing," Harry agreed.

**Harry wished they wouldn't, because he was trying to concentrate on finding his way to classes.**

**There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts:**

"How'd you know how many steps there are? Please don't tell me that you counted all of them!" Hermione said.

"Of course I didn't count them all. I think this J.K. Rowling person just added it in for detail," replied Harry. "I wouldn't be counting all the staircases in the school."

**wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump.**

"I'm always forgetting that step," Neville grumbled.

**Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending.**

"I remember, once in our third year, we were running late for Charms, I think, and Ron thought he knew a shortcut. So he goes to open a door and smacks right in to a solid wall!" Harry laughed. "It was hilarious! The look on his face…"

"Oh ha-ha, Harry. Very funny," Ron grumbled.

**It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit**

**each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armour could walk.**

**The ghosts didn't help, either. It was always a nasty shock when one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open. Nearly**

**Headless Nick was always happy to point new Gryffindors in the right direction, but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth two locked doors and a trick staircase if you met him when you were late for class.**

"For some odd reason he never really seemed to bother me that much," Harry commented.

"Lucky you," Neville said sighing. Peeves had bothered him since his first year.

**He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet,** **pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak up behind you, invisible, grab** **your nose, and screech, "GOT YOUR CONK!"**

**Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Harry and Ron managed to get on the wrong side of him on their** **very first morning.**

"Really Harry?" said Ginny. "Not even a day in school and you are already getting in trouble."

Harry laughed as Fred and George shook his and Ron's hands.

**Filch found them trying to force their way through a door that unluckily turned out to be the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor. He wouldn't believe they were lost, was sure they were trying to break into it on purpose,**

"I swear that is his excuse for everything; that the students do it on purpose!" Parvati exclaimed.

"Well, half the time we get yelled at by him it is not undeserved," Ron said sheepishly.

"Same here," Fred and George said simultaneously.

**and was threatening to lock them in the dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing. Filch owned a cat called Mrs Norris, a scrawny, dust-coloured creature with bulging, lamp like eyes just like Filch's. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of**

**line, and she'd whisk off for Filch, who'd appear, wheezing, two seconds**

**later.**

"I always wondered how he could do that," a first year said.

"Mrs Norris is Filch's familiar; they have a special way of communicating," a seventh year explained.

"Oh, that's cool!" the first year said excitedly.

**Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone (except perhaps the Weasley twins) and could pop up as suddenly**

**as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him, and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs Norris a good kick.**

**And then, once you had managed to find them, there were the classes themselves. There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out,**

**than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.**

"Really, you don't say!" Seamus said laughing.

"Well that's what it was like in the movies!" Harry argued. "You take a wand, say something like "abracadabra" and bam, something cool happens."

**They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the**

**movements of the planets. Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little**

**witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.**

**Easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old**

**indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staff room fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates, and got Emetic the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up.**

**Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their**

**first class he took the roll call, and when he reached Harry's name he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.**

**Professor McGonagall was again different. Harry had been quite right to think she wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a**

**talking-to the moment they sat down in her first class.**

"Yeah, she and Snape both do that because in both classes there could be some really bad damage if something goes wrong. At least in Transfiguration, in first year, the most you can do is accidently turn your match into a pine tree or something. In Potions you could kill the whole class with one slip up," said Fred.

**"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class**

**will leave and not come back. You have been warned."**

**Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized they**

**weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time.**

"Not until at least second, maybe third year," Hermione explained to the younger years.

**After taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end of the lesson,**

**only Hermione Granger had made any difference to her match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Hermione a rare smile.**

"Ron, Harry, and Parvati got it next class," Hermione informed everyone.

"Not really. Mine just had a sliver coding, it was still wood by the third class it was a needle," Ron corrected.

**The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defence Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell's lessons turned out to be a bit of**

**a joke.**

"It really was," said George. "I learned more from Harry then from Quirrell."

**His classroom smelled strongly of garlic,** **which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be**

**coming back to get him one of these days.**

"But Vampires are not warded off by the smell of garlic," said Harry. "If you eat enough garlic you can get them to quit sucking your blood because the garlic will make the blood taste gross, but to ward off a vampire I'd use sunlight or a wooden stake. As a last resort I'd use sliver." Harry finished up this little speech to a stunned crowd.

"Where on earth did you learn that?" Hermione questioned.

"I read it in a library book."

**His turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie,**

"How do you get rid of a zombie?" a first year asked. Everyone looked at Harry.

"That I don't know. I haven't had time to read up on that," Harry admitted.

"To kill a zombie you need fire; that is the best way," Hermione answered.

**but they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing, when Seamus Finnigan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.**

"Well we feel foolish now that we got a vampire lesson," George said.

**Harry was very relieved to find out that he wasn't miles behind everyone else. Lots of people had come from Muggle families and, like him, hadn't had any idea that they were witches and wizards. There was so much to learn that even people like Ron didn't have much of a head start.**

"Nope. I don't think anyone in a magical family would be miles ahead of anyone else. Most families prevent their kids from learning magic so they don't try to show off or get themselves hurt from practising magic that is too advanced for them," George explained.

**Friday was an important day for Harry and Ron. They finally managed to find their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast without getting lost once.**

"Congratulations!" Fred said, giving both Harry and Ron a round of applause.

**"What have we got today?" Harry asked Ron as he poured sugar on his porridge.**

"Poured sugar?" Katie questioned.

"He has a big sweet tooth," Ron explained.

"I'm surprised it wasn't treacle," said Hermione.

"Well the bottle was too far away and I was hungry," Harry said with a shrug.

**"Double Potions with the Slytherins," said Ron. "Snape's Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favours them - we'll be able to see if it's true."**

"It is," Fred sighed.

**"Wish McGonagall favoured us,"**

"She kinda does. She's just not as open about it as Snape," said George. "When we have a big game coming up she doesn't give us homework," he added to the sceptical looks he was receiving.

**said Harry. Professor McGonagall was head of Gryffindor House, but it hadn't stopped her from giving them a huge pile of homework the day before.**

**Just then, the mail arrived. Harry had gotten used to this by now, but it had given him a bit of a shock on the first morning,**

"Yeah, you spat out your milk all over the table and started chocking!" Dean said, laughing at the memory.

**when about a hundred owls had suddenly streamed into the Great Hall during breakfast, circling the tables until they saw their owners, and dropping letters and packages onto their laps. Hedwig hadn't brought Harry anything so far. She sometimes flew in to nibble his ear**

"Doesn't that hurt?" Lavender questioned curiously.

"A little," Harry admitted, "but it hurts a whole lot more when she is mad at me."

**and have a bit of toast before going off to sleep in the owlery with the other school owls. This morning, however, she fluttered down between the marmalade and the sugar bowl and dropped a note onto Harry's plate. Harry tore it open at once. It said, in a very untidy scrawl:**

_**Dear Harry,**_

_**I know you get Friday afternoons off, so would you like to come and have**_

_**a cup of tea with me around three?**_

_**I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with**_

_**Hedwig.**_

_**Hagrid**_

**Harry borrowed Ron's quill, scribbled**

_**Yes, please, see you later**_

**on the back of the note, and sent Hedwig off again.**

**It was lucky that Harry had tea with Hagrid to look forward to, because the Potions lesson turned out to be the worst thing that had happened to him so far.**

**At the start-of-term banquet, Harry had gotten the idea that Professor Snape disliked him. By the end of the first Potions lesson, he knew he'd been wrong. Snape didn't dislike Harry - he hated him.**

**Potions lessons took place down in one of the dungeons. It was colder here than up in the main castle, and would have been quite creepy enough without the pickled animals floating in glass jars all around the walls. Snape, like Flitwick, started the class by taking the roll call, and like Flitwick, he paused at Harry's name.**

**"Ah, Yes," he said softly, "Harry Potter. Our new - celebrity."**

**Draco Malfoy and his friends Crabbe and Goyle sniggered behind their hands.**

"That wasn't even funny," Fred said, rolling his eyes.

**Snape finished calling the names and looked up at the class. His eyes were black like Hagrid's, but they had none of Hagrid's warmth. They were cold and empty and made you think of dark tunnels.**

"You're getting sleepy, very sleepy," Collin joked. Most of the Muggle-borns and half-bloods laughed or snorted into their hands.

**"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion making," he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word - like Professor McGonagall, Snape had you caught on every word - like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a**

**class silent without effort. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes,**

"That can kill you if it is a certain one," George commented.

**the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."**

**More silence followed this little speech. Harry and Ron exchanged looks with raised eyebrows. Hermione Granger was on the edge of her seat and looked desperate to start proving that she wasn't a dunderhead.**

**"Potter!" said Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"**

"Drought of the Living Death," said Harry.

**Powdered root of what to an infusion of what? Harry glanced at Ron, who looked as stumped as he was; Hermione's hand had shot into the air.**

**"I don't know, sir," said Harry.**

**Snape's lips curled into a sneer.**

**"Tut, tut - fame clearly isn't everything."**

"Never said it was," Harry sighed.

**He ignored Hermione's hand.**

**"Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"**

"Stomach of a goat," Harry said yet again.

**Hermione stretched her hand as high into the air as it would go without her leaving her seat, but Harry didn't have the faintest idea what a bezoar was. He tried not to look at Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, who were shaking with laughter.**

**"I don't know, sir." **

**"Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter?" **

**Harry forced himself to keep looking straight into those cold eyes. He had looked through his books at the Dursleys', but did Snape expect him to remember everything in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi?**

**Snape was still ignoring Hermione's quivering hand.**

**"What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and Wolfsbane?"**

"Trick question, they are the same plant and is also called aconite, " Harry recited.

**At this, Hermione stood up, her hand stretching toward the dungeon ceiling.**

**"I don't know," said Harry quietly. "I think Hermione does, though, why don't you try her?"**

**A few people laughed; Harry caught Seamus's eye, and Seamus winked. Snape, however, was not pleased.**

**"Sit down," he snapped at Hermione. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and Wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?"**

"Maybe because you did not tell them to, you great big bat!" Collin said.

**There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment. Over the noise, Snape said, "And a point will be taken from Gryffindor House for your cheek, Potter."**

"Well at least it was only a point," Katie said, looking on the bright side.

**Things didn't improve for the Gryffindors as the Potions lesson continued.**

"Does it ever?" Ron asked.

**Snape put them all into pairs and set them to mixing up a simple potion to cure boils. He swept around in his long black cloak, watching them weigh dried nettles and crush snake fangs, criticizing almost everyone except Malfoy, whom he seemed to like. He was just telling everyone to look at the perfect way Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs when clouds of acid green smoke and a loud hissing filled the dungeon.**

"Oh Neville, melt your first ever cauldron?" Fred asked grinning.

**Neville had somehow managed to melt Seamus's cauldron into a twisted blob, and their potion was seeping across the stone floor, burning holes in people's shoes. Within seconds, the whole class was standing on their stools while Neville, who had been drenched in the potion when the cauldron collapsed, moaned in pain as angry red boils sprang up all over his arms and legs.**

**"Idiot boy!"**

"Idiotic teacher!" Harry snapped back. "Good lord, you don't sit there yelling at a kid when they are in pain! You heal them, then question them or whatever."

**snarled Snape, clearing the spilled potion away with one wave of his wand. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?"**

**Neville whimpered as boils started to pop up all over his nose.**

**"Take him up to the hospital wing," Snape spat at Seamus. Then he rounded on Harry and Ron, who had been working next to Neville. "You - Potter - why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor."**

**This was so unfair that Harry opened his mouth to argue, but Ron kicked him behind their cauldron.**

**"Don't push it," he muttered, "I've heard Snape can turn very nasty."**

**As they climbed the steps out of the dungeon an hour later, Harry's mind was racing and his spirits were low. He'd lost two points for Gryffindor in his very first week**

"Don't worry, Fred and I have lost loads more than that," George said, looking at the raven haired teen.

**- why did Snape hate him so much?**

**"Cheer up," said Ron, "Snape's always taking points off Fred and George. Can I come and meet Hagrid with you?" **

**At five to three they left the castle and made their way across the grounds. Hagrid lived in a small wooden house on the edge of the forbidden forest. A crossbow and a pair of galoshes were outside the front door.**

**When Harry knocked they heard a frantic scrabbling from inside and several booming barks. Then Hagrid's voice rang out, saying, "Back, Fang - back."**

**Hagrid's big, hairy face appeared in the crack as he pulled the door open.**

**"Hang on," he said. "Back, Fang."**

"Fang?" a small first year by the name of Ruby repeated in a small voice.

"Don't worry, Fang isn't dangerous," Harry told her kindly.

**He let them in, struggling to keep a hold on the collar of an enormous black boarhound.**

**There was only one room inside. Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire, and in the corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.**

**"Make yerselves at home," said Hagrid, letting go of Fang, who bounded straight at Ron and started licking his ears. Like Hagrid, Fang was clearly not as fierce as he looked.**

"Oh, that's good," Ruby sighed with relief.

**"This is Ron," Harry told Hagrid, who was pouring boiling water into a large teapot and putting rock cakes onto a plate.**

**"Another Weasley, eh?" said Hagrid, glancing at Ron's freckles. I spent half me life chasin' yer twin brothers away from the forest."**

"Why thank you, Hagrid, we did not know you enjoyed it," said George.

"But we never went into the forest," Fred added. "I think he is confusing us with Charlie."

"Oh yeah, he could be."

**The rock cakes were shapeless lumps with raisins that almost broke their teeth, but Harry and Ron pretended to be enjoying them as they told Hagrid all about their first -lessons. Fang rested his head on Harry's knee and drooled all over his robes.**

**Harry and Ron were delighted to hear Hagrid call Fitch "that old git."**

**"An' as fer that cat, Mrs Norris, I'd like ter introduce her to Fang sometime. D'yeh know, every time I go up ter the school, she follows me everywhere? Can't get rid of her - Fitch puts her up to it."**

"Or it could be that she smells Fang on his clothing?" Lauren suggested.

**Harry told Hagrid about Snape's lesson. Hagrid, like Ron, told Harry not to worry about it, that Snape liked hardly any of the students.**

**"But he seemed to really hate me."**

**"Rubbish!" said Hagrid. "Why should he?"**

**Yet Harry couldn't help thinking that Hagrid didn't quite meet his eyes when he said that.**

**"How's yer brother Charlie?" Hagrid asked Ron. "I liked him a lot - great with animals."**

**Harry wondered if Hagrid had changed the subject on purpose. While Ron told Hagrid all about Charlie's work with dragons, Harry picked up a piece of paper that was lying on the table under the tea cosy. It was a cutting from the Daily Prophet:**

_**GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST**_

_**Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July,**_

_**widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown.**_

_**Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing had been taken. The vault**_

_**that was searched had in fact been emptied the same day.**_

_**"But we're not telling you what was in there, so keep your noses out if**_

_**you know what's good for you," said a Gringotts spokes goblin this**_

_**afternoon.**_

**Harry remembered Ron telling him on the train that someone had tried to rob Gringotts, but Ron hadn't mentioned the date.**

"I didn't think it was that important, to tell truth," Ron admitted.

**"Hagrid!" said Harry, "that Gringotts break-in happened on my birthday! It might've been happening while we were there!"**

**There was no doubt about it, Hagrid definitely didn't meet Harry's eyes this time. He grunted and offered him another rock cake. Harry read the story again. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied earlier that same day. Hagrid had emptied vault seven hundred and thirteen, if you could call it emptying, taking out that grubby little package. Had that been what the thieves were looking for?**

"Yes, yes it was," said Hermione.

**As Harry and Ron walked back to the castle for dinner, their pockets weighed down with rock cakes they'd been too polite to refuse, Harry thought that none of the lessons he'd had so far had given him as much to think about as tea with Hagrid. Had Hagrid collected that package just in time? Where was it now? And did Hagrid know something about Snape that he didn't want to tell Harry?**

"Yes, yes he does," said George.

"Well one more chapter down and -" Harry paused and counted up the rest of them - "Only nine more to go. Who's next?"

He set the book on the table and waited for someone to pick it up.


	12. The Midnight Duel

**(AN: Ok, hears the next chapter updates may be alittle slower because I'm going to be in school starting next week. Do not own Harry Potter. Thanks to Azaelia Silmarwen for looking this over for me.) **

A seventh year, by the name of Sean, plucked the book up off the table and opened it to the next chapter.

"I don't know about you, but this is quite interesting," he commented as he read the title.

"Oh yeah, really interesting," Harry grumbled, rolling his eyes.

"Anyway…" Sean cleared his throat and began to read. "**The Midnight Duel**…"

"You _did _know that you were first years, right?" George asked Harry, looking over at him.

"Yeah, but I did not accept it. Someone did for me," Harry answered, glaring at Ron, who looked down at his shoes.

Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he hated more than Dudley, but that was before he met Draco Malfoy. Still, first-year Gryffindors only had Potions with the Slytherins, so they didn't have to put up with Malfoy much. Or at least, they didn't until they spotted a notice pinned up in the Gryffindor common room that made them all groan. Flying lessons would be starting on Thursday - and Gryffindor and Slytherin would be learning together.

**"Typical," said Harry darkly. "Just what I always wanted. To make a fool of myself on a broomstick in front of Malfoy."**

"You, make a fool of yourself on a broom? Never!" Angelina said smiling.

**He had been looking forward to learning to fly more than anything else.**

"Don't we all," George said.

"I for one prefer to keep my feet on the ground," said Hermione.

"You don't like Quidditch?" asked Lavender, shocked.

Hermione had never missed a game except for that one time in their second year, but that didn't count because there really was no game.

"I never said I did not like Quidditch. I just said that I'd like to keep my feet on the ground," said Hermione, rolling her eyes.

**"You don't know that you'll make a fool of yourself," said Ron reasonably. "Anyway, I know Malfoy's always going on about how good he is at Quidditch, but I bet that's all talk."**

**Malfoy certainly did talk about flying a lot. He complained loudly about first years never getting on the house Quidditch teams and told long, boastful stories that always seemed to end with him narrowly escaping Muggles in helicopters.**

"Does he even know what a helicopter is?" Hermione asked.

**He wasn't the only one, though: the way Seamus Finnigan told it, he'd spent most of his childhood zooming around the countryside on his broomstick. Even Ron would tell anyone who'd listen about the time he'd almost hit a hang glider on Charlie's old broom.**

Fred, George, and Ginny all started to laugh as Ron slowly turned red.

**Everyone from wizarding families talked about Quidditch constantly. Ron had already had a big argument with Dean Thomas, who shared their dormitory, about soccer. Ron couldn't see what was exciting about a game with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly.**

"It is really cool to see them get into fights and it is just interesting," said Dean. "I'm not saying Quidditch isn't interesting, because it is, but I like soccer as well. If there were more sports in the Wizarding world, I'm sure you would like more sports then just Quidditch."

"That's true, I guess," said Ron "Do you think you could tell me more about some Muggle sports?"

"Sure. After this book I'll tell anyone who wants to know more about them."

**Harry had caught Ron prodding Dean's poster of West Ham soccer team, trying to make the players move.**

Dean raised an eyebrow at Ron who merely shrugged.

**Neville had never been on a broomstick in his life, because his grandmother had never let him near one. Privately, Harry felt she'd had good reason, because Neville managed to have an extraordinary number of accidents even with both feet on the ground.**

"I'm sorry, Neville," Harry apologised, sounding sincere, but Neville laughed it off saying that his gran said the same thing.

**Hermione Granger was almost as nervous about flying as Neville was. This was something you couldn't learn by heart out of a book - not that she hadn't tried.**

"'Mione, there are some things you just can't learn from a book, and flying is one of them," said George.

"I know that now, George," said Hermione. "This _was_ four years ago, remember?"

**At breakfast on Thursday she bored them all stupid with flying tips she'd gotten out of a library book called**_** Quidditch Through the Ages. **_**Neville was hanging on to her every word, desperate for anything that might help him hang on to his broomstick later, but  
everybody else was very pleased when Hermione's lecture was interrupted**

"Thank god," Seamus whispered to Dean. "That was _really _annoying."

**by the arrival of the mail. **

**Harry hadn't had a single letter since Hagrid's note, something that Malfoy had been quick to notice, of course. Malfoy's eagle owl was always bringing him packages of sweets from home, which he opened gloatingly at the Slytherin table. **

**A barn owl brought Neville a small package from his grandmother. He opened it excitedly and showed them a glass ball the size of a large marble, which seemed to be full of white smoke.  
**

**"It's a Remembrall!" he explained. "Gran knows I forget things - this tells you if there's something you've forgotten to do. Look, you hold it tight like this and if it turns red - oh..." His face fell, because the Remembrall had suddenly glowed scarlet, "You've forgotten something..."**

"You know what, Neville," Hermione began. "I'm sure if you took your Remembrall to Professor Flitwick he could charm it so it would tell you what you have forgotten."

"That is a great idea, Hermione, but I lost it about a week after I got it," said Neville.

**Neville was trying to remember what he'd forgotten when Draco Malfoy, who was passing the Gryffindor table, snatched the Remembrall out of his hand. Harry and Ron jumped to their feet. They were half hoping for a reason to fight Malfoy,**

"When aren't you guys looking for a reason to fight Malfoy?" asked Loran.

**but Professor McGonagall, who could spot trouble quicker than any teacher in the school, was there in a flash. **

**"What's going on?" **

**"Malfoy's got my Remembrall, Professor." **

**Scowling, Malfoy quickly dropped the Remembrall back on the table. **

**"Just looking," he said, and he sloped away with Crabbe and Goyle behind him. **

**At three-thirty that afternoon, Harry, Ron, and the other Gryffindors hurried down the front steps onto the grounds for their first flying lesson. It was a clear, breezy day, and the grass rippled under their feet as they marched down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the forbidden forest, whose trees were swaying darkly in the distance.**

"How can a tree sway darkly?" Ruby questioned.

"I honestly don't know. Maybe she means forbidding," Hermione suggested.

"How can a tree sway forbiddingly?" Harry asked, trying not to laugh.

"I don't know, Harry!" Hermione snapped.

Harry looked shocked.

"Wow, 'Mione! Calm down! I was joking!"

**The Slytherins were already there, and so were twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground. Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms, saying that some of them started to vibrate if you flew too high, or always flew slightly to the left. Their teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. She had short, grey hair, and yellow eyes like a hawk.  
**

**"Well, what are you all waiting for?"**

"We are waiting for the sun to go down so we can play a game of night tag on brooms!" Sean interrupted himself sarcastically.

**she barked. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up."  
**

**Harry glanced down at his broom. It was old and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles.  
**

**"Stick out your right hand over your broom," called Madam Hooch at the front, "and say 'Up!"'  
**

**"UP" everyone shouted.  
**

**Harry's broom jumped into his hand at once, but it was one of the few that did. Hermione Granger's had simply rolled over on the ground, and Neville's hadn't moved at all. Perhaps brooms, like horses, could tell when you were afraid, thought Harry; there was a quaver in Neville's voice that said only too clearly that he wanted to keep his feet on the ground.**

"You heard that?" Neville was surprised that Harry had noticed.

**Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walked up and down the rows correcting their grips. Harry and Ron were delighted when she told Malfoy he'd been doing it wrong for years.**

"Not really," Angelina explained. "He most likely has a grip that is comfortable for him. Madam Hooch teaches everyone that grip, so if something should happen to students the first time on a broom, they don't break their wrist or fingers."

"Didn't help me much," Neville commented, absently rubbing his wrist in remembrance.

"Well you also crashed from what twenty, twenty-five feet," Harry said pointedly.

**"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard," said Madam Hooch. "Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle - three - two -"  
**

**But Neville, nervous and jumpy and frightened of being left on the ground, pushed off hard before the whistle had touched Madam Hooch's lips.  
**

**"Come back, boy!" she shouted, but Neville was rising straight up like a cork shot out of a bottle - twelve feet - twenty feet. Harry saw his scared white face look down at the ground falling away, saw him gasp, slip sideways off the broom and - WHAM - a thud and a nasty crack and Neville lay face down on the grass in a heap. His broomstick was still rising higher and higher, and started to drift lazily toward the forbidden forest and out of sight.**

"And it was never seen again," said Fred. "Now the broom and our car are having parties every night, laughing about the day they got away."

**Madam Hooch was bending over Neville, her face as white as his. **

**"Broken wrist," Harry heard her mutter. "Come on, boy - it's alright, up you get."  
**

**She turned to the rest of the class. **

**"None of you is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing! You leave those brooms where they are or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say 'Quidditch.' Come on, dear."  
**

**Neville, his face tear-streaked, clutching his wrist, hobbled off with Madam Hooch, who had her arm around him. No sooner were they out of earshot than Malfoy burst into laughter.  
**

**"Did you see his face, the great lump?"  
**

**The other Slytherins joined in.  
**

**"Shut up, Malfoy," snapped Parvati Patil.  
**

**"Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom?"**

"He's my friend! I doubt any of your 'friends' would stick up for you!" Parvati snapped.

**said Pansy Parkinson, a hard-faced Slytherin girl. "Never thought you'd like fat little cry-babies, Patil."  
**

**"Look!" said Malfoy, darting forward and snatching something out of the grass. "It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him."  
**

**The Remembrall glittered in the sun as he held it up.  
**

**"Give that here, Malfoy," said Harry quietly. Everyone stopped talking to watch.  
**

**Malfoy smiled nastily.  
**

**"I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find - how about - up a tree?"**

"How would it stay up there, though? Won't it just roll off?" Lauren asked puzzled.

"Yeah, it would, but Malfoy isn't the brightest lit wand in the shop," Ron said.

**"Give it here!" Harry yelled, but Malfoy had leapt onto his broomstick and taken off. He hadn't been lying, he could fly well.**

Ron looked at Harry.

"What? He could," Harry said dismissingly.

**Hovering level with the topmost branches of an oak he called, "Come and get it, Potter!"  
**

**Harry grabbed his broom.  
**

**"No!" shouted Hermione Granger. "Madam Hooch told us not to move - you'll get us all into trouble."**

"To tell you the truth, Hermione, I really didn't care about getting in trouble," Harry informed her. "I was more concerned about sticking up for a friend, who was not there to stick up for himself. I think that's more important then getting house points taken away or a detention. And I'd gladly do it again."

"You'd just say that so you could get on the Quidditch team," Ron grumbled quietly to himself. Only Hermione heard him.

**Harry ignored her. Blood was pounding in his ears. He mounted the broom and kicked hard against the ground and up, up he soared; air rushed through his hair, and his robes whipped out behind him -and in a rush of fierce joy he realized he'd found something he could do without being taught - this was easy, this was wonderful. He pulled his broomstick up a little to take it even higher, and heard screams and gasps of girls back on the ground and an admiring whoop from turned his broomstick sharply to face Malfoy in mid-air. Malfoy looked stunned.**

" I don't think he was expecting that," Dean said with a big grin.

**"Give it here," Harry called, "or I'll knock you off that broom!" **

**"Oh, yeah?" said Malfoy, trying to sneer, but looking worried.  
**

**Harry knew, somehow, what to do. He leaned forward and grasped the broom tightly in both hands, and it shot toward Malfoy like a javelin. Malfoy only just got out of the way in time; Harry made a sharp about-face and held the broom steady. A few people below were clapping. **

**"No Crabbe and Goyle up here to save your neck, Malfoy," Harry called. **

**The same thought seemed to have struck Malfoy.  
**

**"Catch it if you can, then!" he shouted, and he threw the glass ball high into the air and streaked back toward the ground.  
**

**Harry saw, as though in slow motion, the ball rise up in the air and then start to fall. He leaned forward and pointed his broom handle down - next second he was gathering speed in a steep dive, racing the ball - wind whistled in his ears, mingled with the screams of people**

"We all thought you were going to crash and really hurt yourself," Parvati explained.

**watching - he stretched out his hand - a foot from the ground he caught it, just in time to pull his broom straight, and he toppled gently onto the grass with the Remembrall clutched safely in his fist.  
**

**"HARRY POTTER!"  
**

**His heart sank faster than he'd just dived. Professor McGonagall was running toward them. He got to his feet, trembling.**

"Why?" Ron asked.

"Er, maybe because I just broke the rules about staying on the ground?" Harry said as though he thought Ron had just asked a stupid question.

"Yeah, but you got on the team."

"I didn't know that at the time, Ron! I thought I was going to get expelled!" Harry snapped.

**"Never - in all my time at Hogwarts -" Professor McGonagall was almost speechless with shock, and her glasses flashed furiously, "- how dare you - might have broken your neck -"  
**

**"It wasn't his fault, Professor -"  
**

**"Be quiet, Miss Patil"**

"Thanks, Parvati," said Harry, smiling.

"No problem, Harry."

**"But Malfoy -" **

**"That's enough, Mr Weasley. Potter, follow me, now." **

**Harry caught sight of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle's triumphant faces as he left, walking numbly in Professor McGonagall's wake as she strode toward the castle. He was going to be expelled, he just knew it. He wanted to say something to defend himself, but there seemed to be something wrong with his voice. Professor McGonagall was sweeping along without even looking at him; he had to jog to keep up. Now he'd done it. He hadn't even lasted two weeks. He'd be packing his bags in ten minutes. What would the Dursleys say when he turned up on the doorstep?**

"Most likely; 'So… you didn't even last a week at that freak place? See, you're even too freaky for them to handle.'" Harry said sighing.

The little crowd was silent. Ginny wanted to go over and give him a hug, but before she could, Ruby got up and sat down on his lap. She leaned up against his chest. Harry looked at her.

"Ruby, why are you sitting in my lap?" he asked

"You looked lonely," she explained.

"Oh, well, um, okay then." Harry shrugged and Sean continued to read.

**Up the front steps, up the marble staircase inside, and still Professor McGonagall didn't say a word to him. She wrenched open doors and marched along corridors with Harry trotting miserably behind her. Maybe she was taking him to Dumbledore. He thought of Hagrid, expelled but allowed to stay on as gamekeeper. Perhaps he could be Hagrid's assistant. His stomach twisted as he imagined it, watching Ron and the others becoming wizards, while he stumped around the grounds carrying Hagrid's bag. Professor McGonagall stopped outside a classroom. She opened the door and poked her head inside.  
**

**"Excuse me, Professor Flitwick, could I borrow Wood for a moment?"  
**

_**Wood?**_** thought Harry, bewildered; was Wood a cane she was going to use on him?**

"I hope not!" said Ruby, looking at Harry with concern.

"Don't worry, he is a person," George said.

**But Wood turned out to be a person, a burly fifth-year boy who came out of Flitwick's class looking confused. **

**"Follow me, you two," said Professor McGonagall, and they marched on up the corridor, Wood looking curiously at Harry. "In here." **

**Professor McGonagall pointed them into a classroom that was empty except for Peeves, who was busy writing rude words on the blackboard. **

**"Out, Peeves!" she barked. Peeves threw the chalk into a bin, which clanged loudly, and he swooped out cursing. Professor McGonagall slammed the door behind him and turned to face the two boys. "Potter, this is Oliver Wood. Wood - I've found you a Seeker."**

**Wood's expression changed from puzzlement to delight. **

**"Are you serious, Professor?" **

**"Absolutely," said Professor McGonagall crisply. "The boy's a natural. I've never seen anything like it. Was that your first time on a broomstick, Potter?" **

**Harry nodded silently. He didn't have a clue what was going on, but he didn't seem to be being expelled, and some of the feeling started coming back to his legs. **

**"He caught that thing in his hand after a fifty-foot dive," Professor McGonagall told Wood. "Didn't even scratch himself. Charlie Weasley couldn't have done it." **

**Wood was now looking as though all his dreams had come true at once. **

**"Ever seen a game of Quidditch, Potter?" he asked excitedly. **

**"Wood's captain of the Gryffindor team," Professor McGonagall explained. **

**"He's just the build for a Seeker, too," said Wood, now walking around Harry and staring at him. "Light - speedy - we'll have to get him a decent broom, Professor - a Nimbus Two Thousand or a Cleansweep Seven, I'd say." **

**"I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore and see if we can't bend the first-year rule. Heaven knows, we need a better team than last year. Flattened in that last match by Slytherin, I couldn't look Severus Snape in the face for weeks..."  
**

**Professor McGonagall peered sternly over her glasses at Harry. **

**"I want to hear you're training hard, Potter, or I may change my mind about punishing you." **

**Then she suddenly smiled. **

**"Your father would have been proud," she said. "He was an excellent Quidditch player himself."**

"Wait, wait, wait!" Alicia said. "Let me see if I have this right. You broke a teacher's rules and instead of getting punished, you get rewarded?"

"Yeah," Harry said.

"That's not fair!" Katie said. "We all had to earn our spots on the team and you just get put in."

Fred, George and Angelina all nodded.

"I'm sorry, I never really thought about that," Harry said, looking ashamed.

"Oh Harry, it's not your fault," Angelina said quickly. "If anything, we're mad at McGonagall."

**"You're joking." **

**It was dinnertime. Harry had just finished telling Ron what had happened when he'd left the grounds with Professor McGonagall. Ron had a piece of steak and kidney pie halfway to his mouth, but he'd forgotten all about it.**

"That's an amazing feat. You made Ron forget about food for once in his life," Ginny joked.

**"Seeker?" he said. "But first years never - you must be the youngest house player in about…"**

"… **a century," said Harry, shovelling pie into his mouth. He felt particularly hungry after the excitement of the afternoon. "Wood told me."  
**

**Ron was so amazed, so impressed, he just sat and gaped at Harry.**

"That was uncomfortable," Harry admitted.

"Sorry," Ron apologised.

**"I start training next week," said Harry. "Only don't tell anyone, Wood wants to keep it a secret." **

**Fred and George Weasley now came into the hall, spotted Harry, and hurried over. **

**"Well done," said George in a low voice. "Wood told us. We're on the team too - Beaters." **

**"I tell you, we're going to win that Quidditch cup for sure this year," said Fred. "We haven't won since Charlie left, but this year's team is going to be brilliant. You must be good, Harry, Wood was almost skipping when he told us."**

"That was kinda creepy; he was skipping around the common room that night as well," Katie said.

**"Anyway, we've got to go, Lee Jordan reckons he's found a new secret passageway out of the school." **

**"Bet it's that one behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy that we found in our first week. See you." **

**Fred and George had hardly disappeared when someone far less welcome turned up: Malfoy, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle. **

**"Having a last meal, Potter? When are you getting the train back to the Muggles?"**

"At the end of the summer," Harry commented.

**"You're a lot braver now that you're back on the ground and you've got your little friends with you," said Harry coolly.**

"Uh oh, if it's the voice I think it is; it creeps me out," Ron said.

"We know," Fred, George and Lee said simultaneously.

Harry had caught them once trying to pull a prank on a group of younger kids. He took them into an unused classroom to talk about their pranking, and if the voice _was _that voice Ron was thinking of, it was creepy.

**There was of course nothing at all little about Crabbe and Goyle, but as the High Table was full of teachers, neither of them could do more than crack their knuckles and scowl. **

**"I'd take you on anytime on my own," said Malfoy. "Tonight, if you want. Wizard's duel. Wands only - no contact. What's the matter? Never heard of a wizard's duel before, I suppose?" **

**"Of course he has," said Ron, wheeling around. "I'm his second, who's yours?"**

"Ron!" George said, looking at his younger brother. "What has Dad told you about excepting things for other people?"

Ron looked at him.

"Umm… not to?" replied Ron.

"Exactly!" Fred said "What would happen if Harry and you had shown up and Malfoy really hurt Harry and you?"

"I didn't really think about that," Ron admitted.

"Well next time think before you except anything," George lectured.

**Malfoy looked at Crabbe and Goyle, sizing them up. **

**"Crabbe," he said. "Midnight all right? We'll meet you in the trophy room; that's always unlocked." **

**When Malfoy had gone, Ron and Harry looked at each other. **

**"What is a wizard's duel?" said Harry. "And what do you mean, you're my second?" **

**"Well, a second's there to take over if you die," said Ron casually, getting started at last on his cold pie. Catching the look on Harry's face, he added quickly, "But people only die in proper duels, you know, with real wizards.**

Katie snorted.

"What are we then? Muggles pretending?" she enquired.

"That's not what I meant," Ron said. "I meant wizards that could do more magic then a first year."

"That's the thing, Ron. Malfoy most likely knows more magic then most first years because of his dad. There's no doubt in my mind that his dad told him about Harry and how he made You-Know-Who disappear," Fred said.

**The most you and Malfoy'll be able to do is send sparks at each other. Neither of you knows enough magic to do any real damage.**

"We hope.," George muttered. Sometimes he could not believe how thick his younger brother was.

**I bet he expected you to refuse, anyway."**

**"And what if I wave my wand and nothing happens?"  
**

**"Throw it away and punch him on the nose," Ron suggested. **

**"Excuse me."  
**

**They both looked up. It was Hermione Granger.  
**

**"Can't a person eat in peace in this place?" said Ron.  
**

**Hermione ignored him and spoke to Harry.  
**

**"I couldn't help overhearing what you and Malfoy were saying -"  
**

**"Bet you could," Ron muttered.  
**

**"-and you mustn't go wandering around the school at night, think of the points you'll lose Gryffindor if you're caught, and you're bound to be. It's really very selfish of you."**

"It's not like I had a choice, Hermione," said Harry.

"Yes, you did! You could have just not shown up," Hermione disagreed.

"I guess I could have, but I was not thinking."

**"And it's really none of your business," said Harry.  
**

**"Good-bye," said Ron.  
**

**All the same, it wasn't what you'd call the perfect end to the day, Harry thought, as he lay awake much later listening to Dean and Seamus falling asleep (Neville wasn't back from the hospital wing). Ron had spent all evening giving him advice such as "If he tries to curse you,  
you'd better dodge it, because I can't remember how to block them." **

**There was a very good chance they were going to get caught by Filch or Mrs Norris, and Harry felt he was pushing his luck, breaking another school rule today. On the other hand, Malfoys sneering face kept looming up out of the darkness - this was his big chance to beat Malfoy face-to-face. He couldn't miss it. **

**"Half-past eleven," Ron muttered at last, "we'd better go." **

**They pulled on their bathrobes, picked up their wands, and crept across the tower room, down the spiral staircase, and into the Gryffindor common room. A few embers were still glowing in the fireplace, turning all the armchairs into hunched black shadows. They had almost reached the portrait hole when a voice spoke from the chair nearest them, "I can't believe you're going to do this, Harry." **

**A lamp flickered on. It was Hermione Granger, wearing a pink bathrobe and a frown.  
**

**"You!" said Ron furiously. "Go back to bed!"  
**

**"I almost told your brother," Hermione snapped, "Percy - he's a prefect, he'd put a stop to this."  
**

**Harry couldn't believe anyone could be so interfering.**

"It's true, Hermione. You can be a bit overbearing," Parvati informed Hermione, who frowned at her.

"'Mione," Harry began. "She didn't say that to be mean. She said it to point out a flaw, so you can fix it."

Hermione didn't answer Harry. Harry sighed and blew a puff of air up making his fringe flutter a bit.

**"Come on," he said to Ron. He pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady and climbed through the hole. **

**Hermione wasn't going to give up that easily. She followed Ron through the portrait hole, hissing at them like an angry goose. **

**"Don't you care about Gryffindor, do you only care about yourselves, I don't want Slytherin to win the house cup, and you'll lose all the points I got from Professor McGonagall for knowing about Switching Spells."**

**"Go away."**

**"Alright, but I warned you, you just remember what I said when you're on the train home tomorrow, you're so -" **

**But what they were, they didn't find out. Hermione had turned to the portrait of the Fat Lady to get back inside and found herself facing an empty painting. The Fat Lady had gone on a nighttime visit and Hermione was locked out of Gryffindor tower. **

**"Now what am I going to do?" she asked shrilly.  
**

**"That's your problem," said Ron. "We've got to go, we're going to be late." **

**They hadn't even reached the end of the corridor when Hermione caught up with them.  
**

**"I'm coming with you," she said.  
**

**"You are not."  
**

**"D'you think I'm going to stand out here and wait for Filch to catch me?**

"Just tell him you, er… I have no good excuse for that," George said.

**If he finds all three of us I'll tell him the truth, that I was trying to stop you, and you can back me up."  
**

**"You've got some nerve -" said Ron loudly.  
**

**"Shut up, both of you!" said Harry sharply. I heard something."  
**

**It was a sort of snuffling.  
**

**"Mrs Norris?" breathed Ron, squinting through the dark.  
**

**It wasn't Mrs Norris. It was Neville. He was curled up on the floor, fast asleep, but jerked suddenly awake as they crept nearer. **

**"Thank goodness you found me! I've been out here for hours; I couldn't remember the new password to get in to bed."**

"Why were you there for hours, though?" Patricia asked. "Couldn't someone have given you the password, or you could have followed someone in."

"Yeah, but I didn't want to feel stupid for forgetting or asking for the password," Neville mumbled, now feeling stupid.

"I don't think you would be stupid," Patricia said. "I forget the password the first few days that it is changed as well."

**"Keep your voice down, Neville. The password's 'Pig snout' but it won't help you now, the Fat Lady's gone off somewhere."  
**

**"How's your arm?" said Harry.  
**

**"Fine," said Neville, showing them. "Madam Pomfrey mended it in about a minute."  
**

**"Good - well, look, Neville, we've got to be somewhere, we'll see you later -" **

**"Don't leave me!" said Neville, scrambling to his feet, "I don't want to stay here alone, the Bloody Baron's been past twice already."**

"The Baron won't hurt you," said George. "He'll most likely take you to the head of your house or to the headmaster, depending on why you were out at night."

**Ron looked at his watch and then glared furiously at Hermione and Neville. **

**"If either of you get us caught, I'll never rest until I've learned that Curse of the Bogies Quirrell told us about, and used it on you." **

**Hermione opened her mouth, perhaps to tell Ron exactly how to use the Curse of the Bogies, but Harry hissed at her to be quiet and beckoned them all forward. **

**They flitted along corridors striped with bars of moonlight from the high windows. At every turn Harry expected to run into Filch or Mrs Norris, but they were lucky. They sped up a staircase to the third floor and tiptoed toward the trophy room. Malfoy and Crabbe weren't there yet.**

"Probably never will be there," Ginny said.

**The crystal trophy cases glimmered where the moonlight caught them. Cups, shields, plates, and statues winked silver and gold in the darkness. They edged along the walls, keeping their eyes on the doors at either end of the room. Harry took out his wand in case Malfoy leapt in and started at once. The minutes crept by.  
**

**"He's late, maybe he's chickened out," Ron whispered.  
**

**Then a noise in the next room made them jump. Harry had only just raised his wand when they heard someone speak -and it wasn't Malfoy.  
**

**"Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner."**

"Oh sh- sugar!" George said. "Get out; it's Filch."

**It was Filch speaking to Mrs Norris. Horror-struck, Harry waved madly at the other three to follow him as quickly as possible; they scurried silently toward the door, away from Filch's voice. Neville's robes had barely whipped round the corner when they heard Filch enter the trophy room.**

"That was close," Fred commented.

**"They're in here somewhere," they heard him mutter, "probably hiding." **

**"This way!" Harry mouthed to the others and, petrified, they began to creep down a long gallery full of suits of armour. They could hear Filch getting nearer. Neville suddenly let out a frightened squeak and broke into a run -he tripped, grabbed Ron around the waist, and the pair of them toppled right into a suit of armour.**

"Not good, not good, not good," Angelina chanted as Ruby leaned into Harry, worried about whether they were going to get caught.

**The clanging and crashing were enough to wake the whole castle.  
**

**"RUN!"**

"No, you don't say!" said Alicia, sarcasm dripping on every word.

**Harry yelled, and the four of them sprinted down the gallery, not looking back to see whether Filch was following - they swung around the doorpost and galloped down one corridor then another, Harry in the lead, without any idea where they were or where they were going - they ripped through a tapestry and found themselves in a hidden passageway, hurtled along it**

"Know what might have been funny?" George said. "If it was a brick wall."

"That would not be funny, Fred!" Katie exclaimed. "One of them could have been hurt badly!"

"I'm George, not Fred."

"Whatever, it wouldn't be funny."

**and came out near their Charms classroom, which they knew was miles from the trophy room.**

"Dang you are fast," Colin pipped up.**  
**

**"I think we've lost him," Harry panted, leaning against the cold wall and wiping his forehead. Neville was bent double, wheezing and spluttering.  
**

**I - told -you," Hermione gasped, clutching at the stitch in her chest, "I - told - you."  
**

**"We've got to get back to Gryffindor tower," said Ron, "quickly as possible."  
**

**"Malfoy tricked you," Hermione said to Harry. "You realise that, don't you? He was never going to meet you - Filch knew someone was going to be in the trophy room, Malfoy must have tipped him off."**

"I think he realises that Hermione," Ginny informed her friend. "No need to point it out."

**Harry thought she was probably right,**

"See."

**but he wasn't going to tell her that.  
**

**"Let's go."  
**

**It wasn't going to be that simple. They hadn't gone more than a dozen paces when a doorknob rattled and something came shooting out of a classroom in front of them. It was Peeves. He caught sight of them and gave a squeal of delight.  
**

**"Shut up, Peeves - please - you'll get us thrown out."  
**

**Peeves cackled.  
**

**"Wandering around at midnight, Ickle Firsties? Tut, tut, tut. Naughty, naughty, you'll get caughty." **

**"Not if you don't give us away, Peeves, please."  
**

**"Should tell Filch, I should," said Peeves in a saintly voice, but his eyes glittered wickedly. "It's for your own good, you know." **

**"Get out of the way," snapped Ron, taking a swipe at Peeves**

"He won't like that," Romilda commented.

**this was a big mistake. **

**"STUDENTS OUT OF BED!" Peeves bellowed, "STUDENTS OUT OF BED DOWN THE CHARMS CORRIDOR" **

**Ducking under Peeves, they ran for their lives, right to the end of the corridor where they slammed into a door - and it was locked.**

"Just your luck," Ginny muttered, biting her thumb nail with worry. **  
**

**"This is it!" Ron moaned, as they pushed helplessly at the door, "We're done for! This is the end!" **

**They could hear footsteps, Filch running as fast as he could toward Peeves' shouts. **

**"Oh, move over," Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry's wand, tapped the lock, and whispered, 'Alohomora!" **

**The lock clicked and the door swung open - they piled through it, shut it quickly, and pressed their ears against it, listening.  
**

**"Which way did they go, Peeves?" Filch was saying. "Quick, tell me."  
**

**"Say 'please."'**

"Oh that old joke! Please don't tell me Filch will still fall for it!" Fred laughed.

**"Don't mess with me, Peeves, now where did they go?" **

**"Shan't say nothing if you don't say please," said Peeves in his annoying singsong voice.  
**

**"Alight -please."  
**

**"NOTHING! Ha haaa! Told you I wouldn't say nothing if you didn't say please! Ha ha! Haaaaaa!" And they heard the sound of Peeves whooshing away and Filch cursing in rage. **

**"He thinks this door is locked," Harry whispered. "I think we'll be okay - get off, Neville!" **

**For Neville had been tugging on the sleeve of Harry's bathrobe for the last minute.**

"Yeah, trying to get your attention," said Neville, throwing his hands up in the air.

**"What?"  
**

**Harry turned around - and saw, quite clearly, what. For a moment, he was sure he'd walked into a nightmare - this was too much, on top of everything that had happened so far.**

"What was it?" Ruby asked, looking at Harry with wide eyes.

"A dog," Harry answered, with a slight twitch of the lips.

"You mean like Fang?"

"No. Let Sean read and you'll find out."

**They weren't in a room, as he had supposed. They were in a corridor. The forbidden corridor on the third floor. And now they knew why it was forbidden. They were looking straight into the eyes of a monstrous dog, a dog that filled the whole space between ceiling and floor. It had three heads. Three pairs of rolling, mad eyes; three noses, twitching and quivering in their direction; three drooling mouths, saliva hanging in slippery ropes from yellowish fangs.**

"What the...? Why are they keeping a three headed dog locked up in a school?" Angelina yelled.

"What on earth was Dumbledore thinking?" Katie hollered.

"I swear, if that thing is still here I'm writing home to Dad and telling him to enrol me into a different school," Collin announced.

"It's not in the school anymore," Harry assured them quickly.

"How do you know?" George asked.

"I just know."

**It was standing quite still, all six eyes staring at them, and Harry knew that the only reason they weren't already dead was that their sudden appearance had taken it by surprise, but it was quickly getting over that, there was no mistaking what those thunderous growls meant.  
**

**Harry groped for the doorknob - between Filch and death, he'd take Filch.**

"So would I," most of the house chorused.

**They fell backward - Harry slammed the door shut, and they ran, they almost flew, back down the corridor. Filch must have hurried off to look for them somewhere else, because they didn't see him anywhere, but they hardly cared - all they wanted to do was put as much space as possible between them and that monster. They didn't stop running until they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady on the seventh floor.  
**

**"Where on earth have you all been?" she asked, looking at their bathrobes hanging off their shoulders and their flushed, sweaty faces.  
**

**"Never mind that - pig snout, pig snout," panted Harry, and the portrait swung forward. They scrambled into the common room and collapsed, trembling, into armchairs.  
**

**It was a while before any of them said anything. Neville, indeed, looked as if he'd never speak again.  
**

**"What do they think they're doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?" said Ron finally. "If any dog needs exercise, that one does."  
**

**Hermione had got both her breath and her bad temper back again. **

**"You don't use your eyes, any of you, do you?" she snapped. "Didn't you see what it was standing on."  
**

**"The floor?" Harry suggested. "I wasn't looking at its feet, I was too busy with its heads."  
**

**"No, not the floor. It was standing on a trapdoor. It's obviously guarding something."  
**

**She stood up, glaring at them.  
**

"**I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed - or worse, expelled.**

"Really, Hermione? You'd rather be killed then expelled?" Dennis looked at her as though she had grown another head.

"I have my priorities straightened out now," Hermione said blushing furiously.

**Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."  
**

**Ron stared after her, his mouth open.  
**

**"No, we don't mind," he said. "You'd think we dragged her along, wouldn't you."**

"Well you kinda did," Angelina reasoned.

"No, she followed us; we did not drag her with us," Harry disagreed.

**But Hermione had given Harry something else to think about as he climbed back into bed. The dog was guarding something... What had Hagrid said? Gringotts was the safest place in the world for something you wanted to hide - except perhaps Hogwarts. It looked as though Harry had found out where the grubby little package from vault seven hundred and thirteen was.**

"Okay, that one is over with," Sean said, slamming the book shut. Some of the first years were yawning and rubbing their eyes.

"I think we should all get to bed. Tomorrow we have classes," Katie said as the clock chimed ten.

"Good idea," Loran agreed. "So after we've all finish our homework, if we have any, should we start reading again?"

There was a mummer of yeses and they all went there separate ways to bed.


End file.
